Chinese Intellectual Property Acquisition Tactics Exposed

hackingbear writes "In an interview published in Sina.com.cn, Chinese rail engineers gave a detailed account of the history, motivation, and technologies behind the Chinese high-speed rail system. More interestingly, they blatantly revealed the strategies and tactics used in acquiring high-speed rail tech from foreign companies (Google translation of Chinese original). At the beginning, China developed its own high-speed rail system known as the Chinese Star, which achieved a test speed of 320km/h; but the system was not considered reliable or stable enough for operation. So China decided to import the technologies. The leaders instructed, 'The goal of the project is to boost our economy, not theirs.' A key strategy employed is divide-and-conquer: by dividing up the technologies of the system and importing multiple different technologies across different companies, it ensures no single country or company has total control. 'What we do is to exchange market for technologies. The negotiation was led by the Ministry of Railway [against industry alliances of the exporting countries]. This uniform executive power gave China huge advantage in negotiations,' said Wu Junrong, 'If we don't give in, they have no choice. They all want a piece of our huge high speed rail project.' For example, [Chinese locomotive train] CRH2 is based on Japanese tech, CRH3 on German tech, and CRH5 on French tech, all retrofit for Chinese rail standards. Another strategy is buy-to-build. The first three trains were imported as a whole; the second three were assembled with imported parts; subsequent trains contain more and more Chinese made parts."

Comments

Savvy business dealings

[misophist]

This sounds to me more like savvy business wheeling and dealing. It's no different than what the Indians, Japanese or Koreans would do.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[theshowmecanuck]

And for anyone this is 'news' to, they are retards. The rest of us knew years ago.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[sortius_nod]

It really seems no different to how other industrialized countries work. Except we do it under the guise of "free market". I thought the whole idea of capitalism is to divide and conquer, modern colonialisation.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[hey!]

Step back for a second and look at what's happening.

On one hand, the companies giving up their seed corn aren't being forced to literally at gun point. They're deciding that at this moment, they're better living another day and starving tomorrow. So in a sense it's a win-win scenario.

On the other hand, the enterprise benefiting from this exploits government backing to take a longer term view of the transaction than the companies developing the technology can afford. So in a different it's not a win/win scenario; it's a win/minimize-your-losses proposition.

So China wins here not by being more ingenious or creating new knowledge or technology, but by exploiting its ability to control the rules of the game. If you twist your vision enough, I suppose that what it is doing in this case might look like innovation.

China is a nation with tremendous human resources and ingenuity, but it *also* exploits the fact that it is the only major economic power on earth still pursuing a kind of mercantilist trade policy.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[the eric conspiracy]

It's actually very different from how other countries work because of the centralized acquisition program.

Still I think that this approach is only an incremental step. The Chinese may have the end technology, but it doesn't buy them the ability to develop new technologies. That is a whole different ball game.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[icebike]

The key part not explained is whether the tech sellers asked for and obtained a licensing fee.

Just because China wanted to build in-country, doesn't mean anyone was ripped off.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[mochan_s]

This sounds to me more like savvy business wheeling and dealing. It's no different than what the Indians, Japanese or Koreans would do.

Yeah, this is surprising because everyone expects the Chinese to be the sick man of Asia and a third world run by a regime. They actually did good business. They didn't let one supplier control their train systems while at the same time they built up an indigenous train industry realizing it is vital to their country.

What is surprising that those companies were not able to bribe the select chiefs and get an unfair position, or that some dictator didn't just buy the whole train system and charge it to some world bank loan but though of the future - far far into the future of developing a domestic industry.

And, I wish we had trains for long distance travel in the US. Traveling by car at 70mph for hours and hours is tiring and there is always the prospect of a problem with a car and being stuck somewhere. Airplane travel is marred by the security checks and delays and long wait times.

I guess this would be a stern counter-example to the service industry philosophy. China isn't content on being the factory workhorse while the US controls the technology. China would like to catch up on technical know-how as well and build their own industry.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[grcumb]

This sounds to me more like savvy business wheeling and dealing. It's no different than what the Indians, Japanese or Koreans would do.

It sounds like savvy business practice, and to some degree it is, but it is not at all the same as what the Indians, Japanese or Koreans do.

The Chinese Government has a great deal more control over their economy than other countries. Well, more to the point, they're willing to exert far greater control over their economy than most other nations are.

This is nothing new. Some of us have been trying to sound the warning about the myth of the China Market for years.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[dbIII]

Or Boeing vs Airbus with a bit of help from taxpayer funded spooks.
The major problem with this approach, as shown by Boeing, is that if you take the design details without knowing why something is designed in such a way you can run into a lot of problems.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[Doc Ruby]

You're right about the benefits to the US having a rival that makes the US recognize some limits. But you ignore the problems that come from the rival being a country like China, which is a mafia state. Especially when China gets its way instead of the US getting its way. While the US can be pretty bad, China can be much worse.

You also somehow ignore that Westerners have been fucking with China for at least 600 years, which until the last few decades effectively set China back about 600 years. And even China's rise has been through Westerners fucking with China, which has left China a polluted, exploited wasteland atop which some rich and powerful Chinese people hold total power in partnership with the Westerners who moved their manufacturing and banking there.

When Kipling wrote the lines you quote, the West was at the peak of fucking with China. There are far more Easterners buried wherever Westerners hustled, or invaded, the East. Don't be so complacent about the harmlessness of either China or the West.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[bmo]

"but by exploiting its ability to control the rules of the game"

Nah, they're not controlling the rules. They're playing by the same old rules. Capitalists *will* sell Communists (this time in name only) the rope to hang themselves with.

What important is this quarter. Fuck the future.

--
BMO

Re:Savvy business dealings

[mochan_s]

On one hand, the companies giving up their seed corn aren't being forced to literally at gun point. They're deciding that at this moment, they're better living another day and starving tomorrow. So in a sense it's a win-win scenario.

This is like going to the mechanic and saying that I would only let him service the car if he lets me watch how he does the service. In the future, I could myself become a mechanic and steal business away from him. Of course he can say it's not safe and against company policy to do but he know I can drive out of there and go to the next mechanic and offer him the same terms.

China has to make it's purchasing decisions with the highest value and the seller has to sell with it's own highest value. This is good old capitalism of making good old rational decisions. I suppose it can be argued that starving China of technical know how is good for us but they have money. We have happily clacking away at Chinese made keyboards and sitting on Chinese fabric and plastic all the while spewing vitriol that for all that China has provided, they dare ask for knowledge as trade.

So China wins here not by being more ingenious or creating new knowledge or technology, but by exploiting its ability to control the rules of the game. If you twist your vision enough, I suppose that what it is doing in this case might look like innovation.

If you're such an innovation romantic, then you first have to give China a level playing field. Holding all the technical know how and then berating for lack of innovation doesn't make sense. Of course, I'm assuming here that you're not of the school of philosophy that Asian can't innovate because of their culture.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[Hadlock]

Google "china wind turbine", then come back and see if you want to revise your statement

Re:Savvy business dealings

[Kohath]

It's only savvy if you get something of high value at a low price. High speed rail can hardly be considered of high value.

For freight, high speed rail is less efficient than ordinary rail. The time savings isn't worth the extra fuel consumption. Freight doesn't care if it takes an extra few hours to reach it's destination.

For passengers, high speed rail is slower than air travel, less convenient than travel by car, and it takes more expensive infrastructure than either alternative.

High speed rail transport is for the edification of government officials and it can be celebrated by folks with a religious, romantic, or otherwise emotional attachment to trains. But, except in an isolated case or two, it is not a business, much less a savvy one.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[ArcticBunny]

No surprise. This is done all the time in business no matter what country you are in. You can have partnerships or you can acquire technology. after that you can do what you want with it. This is kind of like the open source model, no? you get the source when you buy the product. After that you decide what you want to do with it.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[MightyMartian]

It was a mixed bag. But there were successes, depending on how you define them. China was certainly prostrated in the 19th and 20th centuries. The US basically remade Japan into the friendliest power in the region. The Brits remade India into the world's largest democracy (forgetting for a moment about the anathema known as Pakistan, the state that should never have been). The Brits also made Hong Kong into one of the world's most important economic powerhouses. There's also Singapore, which was one of the jewels in the British Empire's crown.

There were no lack of failures, though in the case of Britain's Asian holdings, it was declines in general, and not specific to Asia. When the Commies tried to do to Malaysia what they're brethren were doing in French Indochina, I'd say the Brits were pretty damned successful

Re:Savvy business dealings

[MightyMartian]

You can't blame the West entirely. China could have been the preeminent naval power in the 15th and 16th centuries if it had wanted to, but it was even then rotting from the inside and the regime yanked Zheng He back. China had everything it needed to do what Europe did in turn; ships, merchants looking for new markets and ways to avoid the ancient inland trade routes, gunpowder and lots of money. But for whatever reason it went into a tragically-timed period of navel gazing that allowed the Europeans to catch up. Yes, the Europeans did damned rotten things to China, but China has to take some responsibility for the initial weakness.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[FoolishOwl]

I recall a Marxist argument that the key difference between Europe and China in the period was that in Europe, the bourgeoisie succeeded in resisting the aristocracy and winning a measure of independence -- chartered towns and so forth -- whereas in China, the aristocracy succeeded in keeping the bourgeoisie subordinate. The unsettling implication is that if a ruling class is too powerful, it can enforce stagnation, to the detriment of everyone.

The Marxist interpretation implies that in the present, you need to establish the independence of the working class from all other classes; of course, it's hard to miss that an alternate interpretation is that the independence of the bourgeoisie is the critical issue.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[crunchygranola]

... You also somehow ignore that Westerners have been fucking with China for at least 600 years, which until the last few decades effectively set China back about 600 years...

Just to keep the facts straight: Westerners were engaged in fucking China for some 150 years - from 1781 to 1933, Easterners (Japan) started participating in 1894 and then did all the fucking from 1933 until 1945 (which was by far the worst that China got), so Japan gets credit for doing it for 50 years. From 1948 on (more than 60 years) China had been in command of its own policies - nobody has been forcing anything on them and any suffering and ruin has been with the approval of the Chinese government.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[Maxo-Texas]

China also regularly reveals that they have a "Manifest Destiny" style superiority complex laid over the top of a massive inferiority complex laid over flat out racism of a degree that would blow most U.S. citizens away.

Unless they start interbreeding with other races in other countries, this could get really ugly during the next century.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[Anonymous Coward]

Replying AC to preserve moderation, but the West has most certainly not been "fucking with China" for 600 years. 600 years ago, in 1410, the West was in the midst of the dark ages, with the Enlightenment still some 200 years away.
On the other hand, China was prospering nicely under the Ming dynasty, with say, Zheng He's travels as one example of how rich China was at the time (and no, Zheng He did not discover America, contrary to Gavin Menzies' book).
By the time the west arrive in China in any serious, meaningful way, China is one of the world's largest economies, and that's precisely why the west were there, they wanted access to that market. The west didn't have much that the Chinese wanted, beyond naval technology.
Jumping forward to the later Qing dynasty we have the Opium wars - yes this is the west fucking with china. You won't buy anything from us, so we'll sell you opium. So the Opium wars were bad. Of course the 19th century in general was pretty bad for the Qing, they had four rebellions to put down throughout the century including one that had an estimated 20 million casualties (conservative estimate), the Opium wars, the Sino-Japanese war, and wrapping up with the Boxer Rebellion. Yes at this time, the West was technologically superior to China, but from 1850-1920 (or so, maybe a little later, but really the west was done in china by 1920) is hardly 600 years of fucking with China. There are many reasons why the Qing was ill-equipped to deal with the changes of the 19th century, but your vision of the west as this powerful force which dominated China for 600 years is simply untenable.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[DNS-and-BIND]

Marxism? Are you joking, sir? What on Earth is that discredited ideology doing in a serious adult discussion?

Chinese navel-gazing can be quite adequately explained by racism. There are Han Chinese and then there are the lesser races of the world. Stagnation (they called it stability) was a function of China for thousands of years - in fact, they would not exist as a culture today without it.

Bonus Marxist history lesson: after Marxists took over China, they declared war on their own culture and began an orgy of destruction. Religion was destroyed (yay!) including Buddhism (less of a yay, although Buddhism is a religion it always seems to get off easy.) Marxists energetically sought out priceless, irreplaceable cultural artifacts and destroyed them. Centuries-old writings of educated Chinese were burned to ashes, lost forever. Why? Because science said so!

Re:Savvy business dealings

[DNS-and-BIND]

The problem with setting up long-distance rail in America is that all the land is private property, protected by law. The 1980s Texas TGV failed due to this problem (as well as corruption). In China, it's no problem! You simply confiscate the land and build. Progressivism is alive and well in China.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[j_sp_r]

At the moment high speed rail is faster then a plane for shorter ( 4 hours I guess) flights, and goes from center to center of the city, saving even more time. Car cannot compete, as it takes at least 3-4 times longer to drive the same distance.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[HungryHobo]

I was following you right up to:

"Why? Because science said so!"

please elaborate.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[DNS-and-BIND]

Scientific socialism refers to a method for understanding and predicting social, economic and material phenomena by examining their historical trends through the use of the scientific method in order to derive probable outcomes and probable future developments.

Basically, socialism is scientific. If you disagree with socialism, then you are disagreeing with the equivalent to the theory of evolution. Go ahead and laugh. Millions of real people were classified as clinically insane for disagreeing with scientific socialism. Sent to mental institutions, given electric shock therapy, and so on. For some strange reason, this has never been memorialized in the popular media. A strange omission. Go figure!

Re:Savvy business dealings

[AGMW]

Just because China wanted to build in-country, doesn't mean anyone was ripped off.

Assuming the deals cut were signed by both parties I fail to see how anyone was ripped off. If the sellers didn't like the T&C's then they were perfectly at liberty to let some other company sell them the wares.

This is surely just China flexing it's muscle as not just a huge market but, certainly at the moment, the huge market! All companies want a slice of the action because China is where the action is! A friend works for a large multinational company who ended up with a Chinese subsidiary due to a buyout deal somewhere back in time. The tax requirement for getting the profits out of China is HUGE making it not worth it (and the company is V. Successful!), but they they also buy a HUGE amount of materials from China and found that having a Chinese company do the buying was much much cheaper than buying from abroad. The end result is they are V. happy to have (accidentally) bought a Chinese company even though they'd have never gone out just to buy one, and now find they have a lot of expertise in the Chinese market.
They have a foot in the door ... and that foot in the door is EXACTLY why the various train tech companies were (and still should be!) happy to have made the deals!

Re:Savvy business dealings

[AGMW]

... In China, it's no problem! You simply confiscate the land and build. Progressivism is alive and well in China.

See also France's TGV network ... We Brits are looking to put a new HST line from London to Birmingham (and thence to Leeds and Manchester) but the arguments over who's back yard it must go through mean it'll probably never be built, which is a crying shame for the country (though possibly good for the un-blighted countryside! - funny if you look back at the initial spread of the railways and see the building work done for them - tunnel entrances built to look like stately homes and the most wonderful bridges - now it's all just concrete and steel and most definitely a blot on the landscape!).

Even funnier is to look at the British Empire and how we dealt with the Train Tech that we invented. We parcelled it up and 'king gave it away, like every other bloody thing we ever invented [shakes head].

Anyway, I for one welcome our new Chinese overlords ...

Re:Savvy business dealings

[FoolishOwl]

For some strange reason, this has never been memorialized in the popular media.

You have got to be fucking kidding me.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[FoolishOwl]

Racism was an explicit justification for European and American colonialism, so racism does not adequately explain Chinese isolationism.

If the history of Maoism wasn't so horrible, I'd find it funny that Maoism could reject, in theory and in practice, the elementary principles of Marxism, and still be referred to as Marxist.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[nosferatu1001]

No compulsory purchase provision in US law?

Re:Savvy business dealings

[wish bot]

Which American company can produce high-speed trains?

I'll answer for you - none. This conversation doesn't include America. As much as that must pain the trolls.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[MasaMuneCyrus]

You know, I don't know how often I heard "so and so from the West set so and so back 600 years," but it gets pretty old. China fucked China. If China had been 600 years ahead, the West wouldn't have had the power to go and fuck with them. Their warring states, constant overthrowing of dynasties and governments, and otherwise poor government didn't contribute very much to a better society then, and blaming the West on their inadequacies now isn't going to get them a better society now. Not every country formerly owned by a European power sucks today and Taiwan and South Korea have both been owned by East AND West powers and both are doing pretty well today.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[Zorpheus]

I think the problem is (or at least was for a while):
Many Western companies have copyrighted and patented their products in the US and Europe, but not in China. If a Chinese company produces copies of these Western products, why should anyone care? As long as they sell it only in China, no law is broken.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[boxwood]

yeah, in the US its called eminent domain. The above poster is full of shit, the US government, along with the government can take your land (with compensation). Hell in the US they've done it because some corporation wants to build an office building. They do it all the time for highways and railroads.

Besides that they already have land being use by the existing rail network that they could use to build high speed networks. The problem is that the US just doesn't have the will to embark on large scale projects anymore.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[hoboroadie]

I have been blabbing my ill-informed opinion that the Chinese were the only real threat to the U.S. since the early '70s. I'm not particularly nationalistic or xenophobic, but I've always dreaded the efficiencies of the upcoming Chinese global hegemony. I've seen our multi-national overlords using the threat (and execution) of military action to extract bonus tax dollars from us as the dominant modus operandi in my lifetime. When we resume active hostilities on the Korean Peninsula, I'll be reminding my friends how I advised all since the '80s to start learning Mandarin. As far as totalitarianism, we are working towards that also in the U.S. thanks to our various "War on Poverty", "War on Drugs", "War on Terror", and similar programs.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[couchslug]

The East could afford the casualties, and the time, and Mao cleaned out China quite effectively.

His forces used "human wave" assault tactics to good effect and could afford to do that. The US is rich enough to fight its wars of choice with tiny own-side losses, but that's not the only way.

The pollution and exploitation have propelled China to greatness, are a NORMAL part of industrial growth, and not noteworthy.

A mafia state is a worthy opponent, and should teach the US how to function in the world. Our professed ideals have been a drag and impediment. Other countries are eager to deal with "Mafia States", who don't profess Jihad for Democracy.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[couchslug]

Christians keep modding me "flamebait", which we may now define as "any disagreement with Crusade".

Re:Savvy business dealings

[Doc Ruby]

No, you're editing the facts. The Portuguese had already taken over a fort in Hong Kong to defend colonies supporting their trade shortly after they arrived in 1513. All that is "fucking with China". The Opium War represents a peak of fuckery, not the beginning. The West didn't stop fucking with China when Japan invaded in the 1930s - leaving China twisting in the wind was a big part of the fuckery. And though the Western fuckery since the Communist government hasn't been forced, that's not all to fuckery: the pollution and labor exploitation of China and its people is largely Western fuckery, without which China's native masters wouldn't have the grist for the fuckery mill. There have been plenty of other fuckers of China other than Western, including thousands of years of Chinese aristocracy of one ideology or another. But that doesn't discount the half-millennium of Western fucking.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[Synonymous Homonym]

it was even then rotting from the inside and the regime yanked Zheng He back.

Because of the Mongol invasion, not because of the corruption.
The money that had supported the Admiral's adventures that in turn inspired European exploration was needed for the war effort, and China never recovered from it.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[HungryHobo]

if it looks like a cow, moos like a cow, produces milk like a cow but the government declares that it's a duck it's still probably not a duck.

The actions and policies of the USSR and similar tend to have little if anything to do with the labels they applied to them.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[crunchygranola]

No, you're editing the facts. The Portuguese had already taken over a fort in Hong Kong to defend colonies supporting their trade shortly after they arrived in 1513. All that is "fucking with China". The Opium War represents a peak of fuckery, not the beginning. The West didn't stop fucking with China when Japan invaded in the 1930s - leaving China twisting in the wind was a big part of the fuckery. And though the Western fuckery since the Communist government hasn't been forced, that's not all to fuckery: the pollution and labor exploitation of China and its people is largely Western fuckery, without which China's native masters wouldn't have the grist for the fuckery mill. There have been plenty of other fuckers of China other than Western, including thousands of years of Chinese aristocracy of one ideology or another. But that doesn't discount the half-millennium of Western fucking.

Sorry, but this is a gross misrepresentation - preposterous in fact. The Portuguese did indeed attempt to set up a trading colony by armed force in the early 16th century - but they got their asses handed to them in short order and then were gone. China was well able to defend itself - it was at the same technological and economic level as Europe until the industrial revolution (starting about 1780). China was a gigantic and powerful state, with twice the wealth of all of Europe (due to its size) and not some hothouse flower that was despoiled by mere contact with a colonial power wannabe in the 16th century.

China ruled its own territories and was in command of its own fate until the prelude to the Opium War when a Britain now armed with the fruits of the industrial revolution was able to start consistently defeating Chinese forces.

I note also you keep giving Asian imperialists - Japan - a free ride. The West (the U.S.) actually cut off exports to Japan to protest its treatment of China - a considerable national sacrifice during the Great Depression. From 1933 on you have to be deluded to blame China's problems on the West.

In your scenario China today - the world's biggest creditor, the third largest economy in the world (on its way to reclaiming its traditional position as largest in less than a decade) and the effective hegemon of East Asia - is not at fault for its own problems and choices. Sorry - they are big, big boys now and are responsible fo rehat happens to them. Blaming the West for everything is a childish ideological game.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[Doc Ruby]

No, you are arguing a bunch of straw men that I did not state. I said the West had been fucking with China for that time, which you attempted to deny. If Portugal hadn't been fucking with China in the 1500s, China wouldn't have kicked them out after a substantial time.

I didn't say that China was defenseless, or inferior, or that today's China doesn't have blame for its current problems. Indeed I said that it does.

I did not say that China has been totally fucked over by only the West for these centuries. Indeed I noted that Japan's invasion was part of the fucking, though that invasion wasn't exclusive of the West fucking over China in that episode. I'd get into how the US cutting off Japan after its attack of China was no defense of China but more a provocation to US war with Japan, but you're just preaching from your own fallacies, so I won't bother.

You are the one setting up claims of blaming the West for everything. Yours is the childish, preposterous game.

Goodbye.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[Doc Ruby]

In 1410 the West was at the end of the Middle Ages, which ended around 1500, the start of "modern history". The West was heavily fucking with SW Asia through the Crusades. But Marco Polo had already been to China in 1261, and through the 1300s popes sent missionaries, with success in converting Mongols but expulsion (and probably worse) when the Chinese repelled the Mongols.

People with inferior technology and economics fuck with other countries all the time. The Qaeda has been fucking with the US and other Western countries despite that severe inferiority.

The West has been fucking with China for 600 years. If I were saying "ruling China for 600 years", or even "fucking over", you might have an argument.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[Doc Ruby]

I'd say that the Portuguese invading, capturing a fort in Hong Kong and using it to protect Portuguese trading colonies from Chinese resistance counts as "fucking with China", even if China did eventually kick the Portuguese out. And that happened about 500 years ago.

I'd also say that popes sending missionaries to convert thousands of Mongols and Chinese during the Khanates was "fucking with China", which went on from the 1300s onwards.

There's of course a lot more to the history. But representing it as "Westerners who fuck with China will get what their predecessors elsewhere got, which is "played by smarter people":" isn't just oversimplification - it eliminates the long history of Westerners fucking with China without getting "played by smarter people". Likewise the Kipling poem is a quaint relic of the Victorian culture of pretending that the foreigners are getting the better of the English empire that is exploiting them, often to death.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[Doc Ruby]

Taiwan and S Korea were totally fucked until the US invested huge amounts of time, capital and military to create an example in the Cold War that continued to underwrite US global trade even after the Cold War ended. They continue to be primary examples of US hegemony, including huge amounts of US troops. Those countries' fortunes changed when the West stopped fucking them over and changed the way they're used for Western (oligarch's) benefit.

China fucked China by being unable to withstand the West fucking with China through missionaries, spies, invaders, drug dealers and governors. I guess if you want to blame the victim for being too weak to defend from the attacker, it gets pretty old hearing about it.

Besides, I didn't blame the West for their inadequacies now. You did, in a straw man. What gets really old for me is Westerners rewriting history to get out of guilt for past Western actions that shouldn't be claimed by hardly anyone now, as it's not their fault. Unless you identify with the old time fuckers, and covet their power, which is usually the case with people threatened by repeating the facts of history.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[Kohath]

If you happen to live near a train station and have a destination near a train station, and your schedule happens to coincide with the train schedule, then trains might be better than a car. Or if cars are unavailable for some reason. Train passengers would still probably choose alternate transportation if their tickets weren't massively subsidized.

But cars are more convenient for general transportation. Busses are cheaper than trains. And airplanes are cheaper than trains and faster. Many coastal airports are near the city center and transportation to city centers is always available.

High speed rail usually only makes sense if it is artificially subsidized and/or if competing transportation modes are artificially restricted. In the real world, it is second rate at best.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[HiThere]

Just a heads up...
China already owns most of the US economy. (This next bit has been mushed around a bit in my memory, so the facts are incorrect. But the idea is still correct.) In fact recently when a reporter asked a Chinese official if they were planning an attack on Wall Street she received the reply "Why should we. We already own most of it."

China could sink any US policy it cared enough about by calling in some of it's foreign debt. This would cause the US economy to tank as much as China cared to. If they called in all their foreign debt the US would have the choice of either repudiating it's foreign debts, or hyper-inflating the dollar. A few thousand percent in one month should solve the problem of the Chinese debt...of course either of these choices would cause many other problems... Then there's all the property owned outright by China and other foreign countries. China owns enough already that this is another major area where they can exert economic control, either by hiring people, and thus causing prosperity, or by laying people off, causing a depression.

Currently China seems to be supporting our economy. Probably not out of good wishes, but out of rational self-interest. But still, supporting it. Just imagine what the economic downturn would be like if they just stopped. Not actively tried to cause harm, but just stopped offering support. All they'd need to do is allow their currency to rise a bit against the dollar.

If this is economic warfare, then China won a few decades ago. I'll admit that they probably speak using those metaphors. They don't play american football over there, so they aren't going to use those metaphors. But it's a metaphor. The object of this game is to win, not to destroy. And China has won.

People talk about china's lack of respect for human rights. It's true. They don't really have any choice about that. They've GOT to keep the population growth under control. And when you give a government power, it practically never gives it up. (The occasions that I can think of where that happened are all more mythological than historical. Cincinnatus giving up dictatorial power over Rome when the war had been won is one example.) OTOH, the Soviet Union breaking apart (almost) peacefully shows that it *CAN* happen. And the current China is less autocratic than it was under Mao. (Still, China has a long history of switching between Emperors and WarLords. One shouldn't be surprised to see it continue. But improved transportation and communication may change things. A part of the reason used to be that the country was just too large to be centrally controlled, so the Emperor had to "trust" his provincial governors.)

Re:Savvy business dealings

[MightyMartian]

Where the hell do you get your history. The Mongol invasion of China had happened two and a half centuries earlier.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[HiThere]

How has Marx ever been discredited? Mind you, I think his arguments weak. But the various Communist Parties had little to do with Marx beyond abusing his name.

And in this particular instance I think it's a valid argument. *ANY* dominant group attempts to freeze the present into a mold that will maintain their dominance. There may be exceptions, but I can't think of any off-hand. It holds for sports teams, political parties, every dominant group. Some dominant groups acquire more power to freeze the present than others, but they all attempt it.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[HiThere]

Natural languages are *so* ambiguous.

What's the definition of "Fucking with". I think that both the parent and the grandparents of this post were sincere, but that they were using different meanings. If one were to substitute "Interacting with" then Doc Ruby would clearly be correct. If one were to substitute "Dominately abusing" then the grandparent looks more correct. And either is a legitimate interpretation.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[Doc Ruby]

What I mean by "fucking with" is "abusing". You don't have to dominantly abuse to abuse. Though the abuse of China by the West was designed to dominate it, and eventually did.

I'll also note, since so many commenting in this discussion have filled in the vacuum with straw men, that the West was not the only abuser of China, that China was not defenseless against the abuse, that indeed China often defended successfully against the abuse, and that China has itself engaged in its own abuse, both of itself and of other countries. None of those points are really relevant to what I have discussed, but rather than get dragged down those distracting roads again I'll satisfy others' needs to address them up front.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[HiThere]

If the professed ideals were accurate descriptions of what is enacted, they might well NOT be a drag. But they are little better than hypocrisy. (I *do* cherish that little bit.)

Note that I'm describing our current government. There have been periods when, at least domestically, we attempted to live up to our ideals. It's an interesting fact to note that at these periods the bulge in the population age has been around 20. I.e., they reflect the ideals taught in the schools, but without the experience of what living in the civilization is like. In the particular instance of this with which I am familiar (1960's-70's) there was also a large and prosperous middle class. That may be another important factor.
P.S.: Note that even during this time the govt. only attempted to live up to the proclaimed ideals domestically. External relations were always a matter of "We're bigger and stronger, so do as we say", possibly a legacy of Dulles' "Brinksmanship", but quite possibly much older. ("Speak softly and carry a big stick", etc.)

Re:Savvy business dealings

[MightyMartian]

Marx's economic notions were wonky, but Marxism had a pretty huge influence on historical analysis. I'm sure this is a new concept for you, but there's this idea floating around that because a guy was wrong about one thing doesn't necessarily mean he's wrong about everything.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[xenn]

No surprise. This is done all the time in business no matter what country you are in. You can have partnerships or you can acquire technology. after that you can do what you want with it. This is kind of like the open source model, no? you get the source when you buy the product. After that you decide what you want to do with it.

I certainly think so. Perhaps albeit, with a sour aftertaste for some.

The great thing for human kind though, is since China knows it doesn't own the intellectual concepts they cobbled together and put into function, all the developments improvements they have made by doing so is now Free (as in speech) for all the world to copy.

For all they're tyrannical control of censorship, I believe history will absolve them to a degree, as they do the world a favor.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[marcosdumay]

Yep, you said everything. The models are wonky, but people use them a lot while analysing history and sociology.

I still don't get why one should not dismiss everything (the model and analysis).

Re:Savvy business dealings

[metrix007]

Why would the US have to pay immediately what was obviously an attack? Could they not just call in their debts to other countries?

Re:Savvy business dealings

[MightyMartian]

Because, whether some folks like it or not, friction between social classes has been a reality throughout history. It would be hard, for instance, to describe post-Medieval European history without invoking at least some Marxist notions.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[TheLink]

China already owns most of the US economy.

Citation please.

China could sink any US policy it cared enough about by calling in some of it's foreign debt.

1) The USA only owes China about 2+ trillion US dollars. AFAIK this amount is payable in US dollars.
2) The USA has the power to create US dollars.
3) The USA has ALREADY created at least 9 trillion US dollars since 2008 and most people don't seem to care about that. Many people (including those in the finance world) even still believe the USD is the currency to switch to when they are scared. So what's creating another 2 trillion, nobody cares as long as you call the process something fancy (do a youtube search for "quantitative easing").
4) Many countries and organizations in the world hold large net positive amounts of US dollars (to buy oil etc, google for petrodollar), so any creation of US dollars will be in effect a tax on them. So while the creation of US dollars will make US citizens poorer it also makes many countries poorer as well. It's not like Zimbabwe where the rest of the world could laugh when Zimbabwe dollars were printed. The rest of the world lives in US's Zimbabwe, so it ain't so funny.

In short, if China makes too big an issue about it, the USA can say "Fine, here are the trillions of US dollars we owe you, low mileage, single owner, just like new...", "Anyone else wants their US dollars too? Plenty more where that came from". And the other countries would shut up.

China is willing to make this "trade" because they want the technologies and skills. They seem to be getting what they want out of the deal.

What does the USA get out of it? Cheap toys, big TVs, iPhones, etc. If the resulting savings are/were used wisely the US wouldn't be in a bad position in the future.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[TheLink]

But it seems to be a Government and bureaucrats working for the long term interests of their country! How terrible right? :)

Maybe they should switch to a more democratic[1] system of Government.

[1] FWIW they actually do have elections in China - but they're for positions within the One Party.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[T.E.D.]

And, I wish we had trains for long distance travel in the US. Traveling by car at 70mph for hours and hours is tiring and there is always the prospect of a problem with a car and being stuck somewhere. Airplane travel is marred by the security checks and delays and long wait times.

Err...we do. Americans just don't like to use it. Probably because once you get there, you will most likely need a car once again. One D.C. to Orlando route addresses this by tacking on some extra cars to carry your automobiles with you. Guess which is the one Amtrak train I've ever personally taken?

Of course if Americans *did* like to use it, then we'd probably have to add all those security checks like the airlines have. For example, in India everyone uses the train system, and it has been a primary terrorist target for decades.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[HiThere]

That's what I meant by one month of hyperinflation. But there would be severe side effects. A part of the current economic problems are due to the recent hyperinflation to allow the banks to walk off with much of the country's wealth.

Do you think that if this happened again that OPEC would continue to sell oil in dollars? It might, but there would be severe costs involved as "payoff" to keep them acquiescent. (Yeah, I heard the rumor that the invasion of Iran was because they started to sell oil in Euros, but one country is different from OPEC.)

You might look into the history of what happened to Rome when it got into the habit of inflating the currency. (I'll admit that in that case they could only inflate the newly issued coins, so the effect wouldn't be exactly the same.)

Re:Savvy business dealings

[AdamWill]

"It's actually very different from how other countries work because of the centralized acquisition program."

Not really. Japan, for instance, did exactly the same thing throughout most of the 20th century, much more rapidly after the 1950s. The large private manufacturing companies in Japan were (and, to an extent, still are) directed by government agencies. Japanese industry was nothing like a free market during the entire period it developed into one of the world's largest players in heavy manufacturing and, later, electronics; the national government planned the entire process and directed the private companies which implemented the plan. The difference between the companies and the government, at the highest level, was pretty damn fuzzy and academic.

The process involved all the same things China is doing now; playing off individual companies from more technologically capable nations against each other for immediate benefit ('if WE don't sell this technique to the Japanese, Bloggs & Co sure will!'), reverse engineering, and so on. Nothing new at all. Fundamentally, as has already been pointed out, it comes down to 'intellectual property' being a very precarious and utterly notional concept which only works at all with extremely heavy-handed enforcement and everyone involved singing from the same hymn sheet. If you don't have that, it's just not going to work.

Rather than complain it's probably better to just get on with inventing even newer and better stuff. After all, if your competitors are always copying what you did last year while you have something better on the drawing board, you're still going to win, right?

Re:Savvy business dealings

[vonbratty]

And the Indians, Japanese and Koreans eventually accede to some rudimentary respect of intellectual property rights. Inventors are made nervous by the knowledge that some person or entity can wrest their idea from them. This will eventually affect China negatively, because people will lose the will to invent, and/or they will become displeased with their government. The same story has been told hundreds of times before in the history of patent law. Just never this big, as by virtue of size, so seemingly blatant.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[AdamWill]

Amtrak has 'high speed' (just, just, barely, by international standards; it's nowhere near European, Japanese, or, yes, Chinese levels) trains on precisely one route: Washington to Boston (Acela). It hits a maximum of 150mph and averages 80mph. Compare Eurostar which maxes at 186mph and averages somewhere north of 105mph. No other Amtrak route is close to international 'high speed' standards. Usually this is because the standard of the track is not good enough to allow them to run very fast.

Amtrak services outside of the north east corridor also tend to be very infrequent and very unreliable; they have no priority over freight traffic outside of a very small defined journey window, so if the train gets held up for any reason, it will continue to get further and further behind schedule because it has to keep waiting for freight traffic which now has priority. There's almost no dedicated passenger rail track and freight traffic is quite heavy so it screws the hell out of the Amtrak schedules.

Despite all the above, I quite like Amtrak - but more or less *because* it feels like an enjoyably antiquated trip back in time to 1912. I quite enjoy travelling quite slowly and unpredictably on gigantic trains with acres of leg room and restaurant cars with waiter service, and I use it when it doesn't really matter if I wind up five hours late. But it's nowhere close to being a practical and reliable mode of transport for most people, as European and Asian high speed rail is.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[AdamWill]

sigh. old, tired arguments again.

Americans only don't live near train stations because America artificially subsidized *car* transportation, resulting in the ugly and hilariously inefficient acres and acres of dull wasteland suburbs in which you all live. America also heavily subsidizes air travel through all sorts of tax and regulation breaks granted to airports and airlines.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[Kohath]

Roads and airports actually make sense without subsidies. If all subsidies stopped, roads and air travel would continue to thrive. Only passenger rail requires subsidies to exist. No one will build a private-sector passenger rail line.

Also, roads and airports are actually useful for transporting freight in addition to passengers. Freight transport is actually more important than passenger transport, and high-speed rail is poorly suited to freight transportation.

You argue against suburbs as if arguing against them makes them disappear. Rail is definitely suited to fantasy worlds where everyone lives in Manhattan or Hong Kong or Tokyo. We should build fantasy trains in those fantasy worlds with fantasy funds. I'm sure they'll be fantastic.

Old arguments persist when they're not refuted. It also helps that they're correct.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[TakeyMcTaker]

it doesn't buy them the ability to develop new technologies.

Sure it does! All new technologies are just small steps from existing technologies, and can be reverse-engineered. The "lone genius inventor" myth perpetuated by the monopoly-making patent system will be the death knell of all existing economic powers.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[TheLink]

What's another 2 trillion[1]?

The USA has already created many trillions since 2008, without hyperinflation of a "few thousand percent in one month". Seems like as long as they don't call it "printing money" nobody appears to notice or care that much.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=armOzfkwtCA4
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a7484bxHz7Bk

While it's still "printing money" if you lend money that doesn't exist, or borrow from a "financial smoke and mirrors scheme" to pay off a real debt, it seems as long as the smoke and mirrors are good enough, nobody asks too many questions about it. I doubt China would either - they'd take the trillions very quietly and try to convert it to stuff that's more tangible, before everyone else notices...

[1] Approximately:
http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/tic/Documents/mfh.txt
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/02/chinas-debt-to-us-treasury-more-than-indicated/
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timcollard/100011049/america-owes-china-two-trillion-dollars-but-what-does-that-mean/

Re:Savvy business dealings

[mochan_s]

Err...we do [amtrak.com]. Americans just don't like to use it. Probably because once you get there, you will most likely need a car once again. One D.C. to Orlando route addresses this by tacking on some extra cars to carry your automobiles [amtrak.com] with you. Guess which is the one Amtrak train I've ever personally taken?

Air travel is even worse when it comes to needing transportation. Airports have to be located 30-40 miles outside the city. This is solved by having rental car stations on the airport and have circling vans to take you to hotels. At least the train stations are downtown, though in the ghettos. Anyway, most Amtrak stations are also served by Greyhound buses where you can be picked up or if in a commercial area take a cab.

I took Amtrak during 9/11 when all planes were grounded. We spent 2 days in Montana. Needless to say, Amtrak is way too slow to be a feasible long distance transportation and too expensive to be feasible short distance transportation/commute.

Of course if Americans *did* like to use it, then we'd probably have to add all those security checks like the airlines have. For example, in India everyone uses the train system, and it has been a primary terrorist target for decades.

The freeway is used by most Americans but is never a terrorist target. Why? In India, the trains itself aren't targeted but passenger compartments at specific passengers. And you'd have to use broad sense of terrorism when it's one religious faction targeting another religious faction.

Re:Savvy business dealings

[MasaMuneCyrus]

It's not a matter of a defensive stance. The victim mentality is a dangerous one for both the victims and for the accused. All it does is stir nationalism and racism on both sides.

It's easy to waste away in mediocrity when your squalor isn't your fault or your responsibility, but someone else's. The constant focus on the West and how it should feel guilty for its past atrocities in China only makes the Chinese feel enraged about they could have been great but were held back by the evil West, and it makes the West enraged for being endlessly derided because their distant ancestors did something horrible.

This is news?

[amightywind]

The story is not that the Chinese are devious, acquisitive SOB's. It's that the west continues to be stupid enough to enable them. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704679204575646472655698844.html Frist post!

Re:This is news?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's just shit trying to belittle a successful project.

The US's most successful consumer electronic companies are totally reliant on Japanese IC designs fab'd in China. Does that make the US "designed" do-dads failures? Of course not.

Fail

[benjamindees]

This is Econ 101 shit and it's embarrassing that Western countries are selling out their high tech companies for a bunch of government debt, poisoned food and defective consumer crap.

Re:Fail

[gilbert644]

Well this is the difference between a state that has long term goals of improving it countries vs. corporations that can't see beyond the next quarterly report. Maybe it is true what they say, a capitalist will sell you the rope that you will use to hang him.

Re:Fail

[gilbert644]

This was a comment on capitalism. Do I have to say I love China at the end of every post to be spared the ire of the 50 cent army?

Re:Fail

[inf4mia]

Well this is the difference between a state that has long term goals of improving it countries vs. corporations that can't see beyond the next quarterly report.

This is exactly what was said about the Japanese economy (and business culture) when it was doing well. The Chinese also have to drag around the yoke of rampant government (in addition to the standard private) corruption.

Re:Fail

[Mana Mana]

> this is the difference between a state that has long term goals of improving it countr[y] vs.
> corporations that can't see beyond the next quarterly report.

***China is an elephant that can fly!***

This planet has never seen such an _economic_ rise, not post WWII Europe, not even 20th century USA with its post-war advantage of a devastated first world manufacturing base whilst its own plant was ascendant.

The USA's economic orthodoxy is that attenuated (save Tea Party, Rep. Ron Paul, right wing Republicans) laissez faire, minimal market regulation, minimal market interference, no industrial policy will lead to maximum national economic gains. Since Deng Xiaoping's 1972 market/China opening China has amalgamated Japan's MITI approach (industrial policy) with the West's form of capitalism. In essence they are _demonstrating_ that there is more than one form of capitalism. And their form kicks ass, to the chagrin of western economists and politicos. These Chinese market tactics are if not identical wholly descendant from 1980's Japan Golden Age[1].

BTW, contrary to your quote above, Japan is an economy legendary for putting the long term above ALL ELSE. Yet since 1990 Japan has been in an economic depression that shattered the once indomitable, invulnerable, invincible myth that once was a nation of "Samurai businessmen." I frankly am very surprised at how low Japan's business savvy has sunk. Once upon a time called the 1980s, Japan would do the same sort of thing as in the OP, it would diversify its supply of commodities (1.) to eliminate supplier supremacy and (2.) to achieve lower prices and (3.) gain influence. So, if it needed iron ore, copper ore, petroleum, aluminium, whatever it would set rival nation suppliers against one another---say, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Chile, the USA! whomever---for fractional supply quantities. Thusly, low economies of scale would lead to higher cost for Japan, initially, but no one supplier had a stranglehold on Japan. Two, Eventually suppliers would plead for bigger market shares with lower prices for the booming Japanese economy. Three, nations would enact laws beneficial to Japan, nations' indigenous corporations would lobby their governments for infrastructure projects in an effort to ingratiate themselves for future Japanese business or to supply the commodities needed for said infrastructure projects, etc. But now I see that Japan, like the rest of teh globe is a decade away from weaning themselves away from and is presently on bended knee kowtowing to China for rare earth exports. THAT! gentlemen would never have happened to the 1980s Japan. The master is getting tutored!

So I remind you that ***China is an elephant that can fly!***

The planet has never seen a nation rise from so low ECONOMICALLY to so high. Mind you the Middle Kingdom (China) is a nation of deep cultural depth. Reaching back millenia! They are not they were not ignorant not last century, not two three centuries ago either. Think of the Communist Party as the last in a succession of Emperors. China has had them all along its history, some have lasted centuries, some have lasted fifty to ninety years, some have not even been Chinese but barbarian. The communist nation is only sixty-two years old. Their modern ascendancy is thirty-nine years old. Will it last? Will it keep flying? Will the Chinese subsume their liberty to the Party for another sixty-two or thirty-nine years? Even Japan looked unstoppable. Once. It makes an omelet out of our American, western, libertarian, Tea Party, Austrian Economic school orthodoxy.

[1] "Dogs and Demons: tales for the dark side of Japan", Alex Kerr, 2001. A never seen analysis (by a long time nipponophile) in the western press on the cultural, economic, spiritual, ecological malaise of Japan.

Re:Fail

[frosty_tsm]

[1] "Dogs and Demons: tales for the dark side of Japan", Alex Kerr, 2001. A never seen analysis (by a long time nipponophile) in the western press on the cultural, economic, spiritual, ecological malaise of Japan.

Read it and loved it. Even though it's almost a decade old, it describes Japan's current situation pretty well while presenting lessons for us Westerners to take home.

Re:Fail

[LordNacho]

Dude, tell us what the lessons are! Bullet points?

Re:Fail

[ShooterNeo]

One observation : this is all very well and good, but China is growing insanely rapidly...at catch-up. It's hurtling through the phases of industrial developement...but it's also decades behind the west overall. Once China's industry and economy is overall to par with the west...will they be able to keep making such rapid progress? Copying technology is one thing...doing the original engineering to advance the tech to the next phase is something else.

I don't actually know the answer to this. I know that China does do some original engineering, and theoretically with the world's largest population, they could do a lot more if they had enough trained and educated people.

10,000m curve radius

[Animats]

One of the points mentioned is the desire to design for a 10,000 meter curve radius! Now that takes aggressive land acquisition.

Re:10,000m curve radius

[pushing-robot]

To be fair, Chinese property rights are slowly improving, and compulsory purchase (in one form or another) is fairly common worldwide. After all, you've got to build bypasses...

Re:10,000m curve radius

[Barny]

Ok, that is the WHOOOSSSHHH of the decade.

Re:10,000m curve radius

[poity]

The laws at the central level are indeed improving (slowly), but there is pretty much no change for property owners who see much of their compensation pocketed by local government officials. My girlfriend's family is one such case. They agreed to a 500000RMB deal for their parcel and house on the city outskirts, but the local department in charge of distributing compensation would only release 200000RMB, less than half, telling them 200k is "enough" and that they "shouldn't be greedy", even though the department in charge of development made the deal for 500k. They have no recourse since there's no such thing as suing the government. The only way they could hope to get full compensation is if they had connections with higher level government officials (county or province level) who have the power to indict their subordinates. As to where the rest of the money went, you can take a look at party officials cruising around in Audi A8s and guess.

Re:10,000m curve radius

[markov_chain]

I was in Beijing recently and was totally amazed by the number of official black Audi sedans. Wtf are they all for? And how the heck did Audi land this deal :D

Re:10,000m curve radius

[Synonymous Homonym]

Can't they sue the official(s) that pocketed their money?
AFAIK corruption is a capital offense in China. Shouldn't that give them some leverage?

Re:10,000m curve radius

[poity]

Legally they can, but it's futile when officials protect their own either as face-saving gestures for the government apparatus or as quid-pro-quo for past/present/future bureaucratic assistance i.e. helping each other hide their own corruption. What would happen if you did sue is that you'd pay out the ass for a lawyer who's made useless by all the red tape and technicalities placed in front of him.

You also have to realize that the "corruption" offense is often just a way for internal factions to get rid of trouble makers or to give the impression that central is taking care of the problem. That's why you always see guys on the lower end of the totem pole get arrested. Not that those guys didn't deserve it, but if you honestly indict everyone who has taken bribes, you'd end up penalizing 90% of the local governments and at least half of the central government.

Google Translate as the source?

[kervin]

Seriously guys?

The only source of the article is a Mandarin to English machine translation?

I'm sure nothing will get lost in that translation...

Re:Google Translate as the source?

[Cylix]

There are other articles elsewhere regarding this methodology.

The goal is fairly straightforward, trade IP for allowing the foreign company to dip into the local market. As they noted, the initial purchase is a flat purchase with some rights and eventually it progresses into full blown production. I was under the impression they were now deploying modified variants as their own brand and attempting to sale abroad. However, companies such as Kawasaki only agreed to such practices as long as their traded IP was not sold outside of China. ie, we might give you the plow, but you can't compete with our domestic plowing trade.

I've read more then one article regarding regarding this so I'm sure there are several more floating about if there is more interest on the subject. I was using an aggregater at the time so I'm unsure of the specific outlet.

Re:Google Translate as the source?

[HelloKitty2]

This is definitely a problem and might give a wrong picture of what is being said.

Re:Google Translate as the source?

[QuoteMstr]

The laws of physics aren't any different for planes made in China. Why would they be cheaper to operate?

I suppose

[mevets]

But what about the old fashioned way of exploiting the spoils of war? Between that and open immigration, we built atomic weapons and landed on the moon.

Its a bit unseemly to just purchase stuff and figure out how it works....

Re:I suppose

[Anonymous Coward]

Think of it like european scholars rediscovering ancient works from the muslims and eventually doing their own major works again.

Re:I suppose

[JBMcB]

There weren't patent agreements between countries back then. China has agreed to abide by our IP laws to facilitate trade, then ignores them. It's one thing when individual inventors and engineers do it, it's quite another when it's state policy handed down to state run companies for state funded projects.

Re:I suppose

[damburger]

Just goes to show the absurdity of IP law really. Those treaties are nothing but toilet paper if China can disregard them so easily without consequences. IP as currently envisioned basically doesn't work; it attracts rent-seekers like a flame attracts moths, and it can't be enforced on individuals (explosion of piracy) nor on nations who get no benefit from it (China).

Nobody can expect the Chinese government to go against its own national interest (and although its not a democratic government, in this case the interests of the CCP line up fairly well with their people - both want the most rapid economic development possible).

You can no more build an economy on vastly inflated claims of invention than you can build one on endlessly increasing house prices. Economies are build by extracting resources from nature and shaping them into goods and services that improve our quality of life. Anything that does not fall directly under that description should be treated with extreme skepticism.

Re:I suppose

[HiThere]

And anything that *does* fall directly under that description is doomed to fail due to resource depletion.

So come up with an alternative. (Hint: Buckminister Fuller used the term ephemeralization.)

ICs instead of individual transistors is one step along the way, but we haven't completed the journey. But already we can lay down (unreliable) single atom wide traces and circuits. In a few labs. Nano-technologies using mainly CHON can demonstrable be used all over the surface of the planet, but Silicon is also sufficiently common. There are probably a few other elements that are widely available. The trick is going to be building nanotechnology based extraction engines that can run on solar power. Fortunately, our genetic engineering is proceeding apace, and plants suffice for mining CHO&N. And there are already some grasses that mine silicon to edge their leaves. So we've got a decent head-start. We should be seeing the first results by 2020, probably based around bacteria or algae.

Re:I suppose

[damburger]

Physical economy has hard limits, but using financial instruments and bubbles to pretend those limits don't exist or can be indefinitely postponed is ridiculous.

There were two parts to what I said. Extracting resources can be done on a scale within the energy budget of the planet and using recycling to maintain a steady state - although at some point we are going to have to look outside Earth, but we aren't quite there yet. Utilising them can be made progressively more efficient thus giving us more 'stuff' for our megajoule. What you've said about CHON based technologies would fall under this category.

Supposedly, the abstract part of our capitalist economies makes things more efficient too - but economists define efficiency not in physical terms but basically in terms of how much crap you can externalise. If you honestly believe the abstract economy improves the efficiency of the physical one, please show your working!

3 lines from 3 different countries?

[amanicdroid]

Now instead having to learn how to manufacture parts for 1 consistent line type, they have to support 3. Awesome work China.

Re:3 lines from 3 different countries?

[amanicdroid]

"No: it means they can just take the best technology from all three if compatibility issues are resolvable and can be done for a reasonable amount."
Fix'd

Re:3 lines from 3 different countries?

[amanicdroid]

Your point?

Re:3 lines from 3 different countries?

[martin-boundary]

No, money is no object to the Chinese. The purpose is nation building.

Re:3 lines from 3 different countries?

[amanicdroid]

more effort, money, engineering, manufacturing lines, personnel, training,etc

Re:3 lines from 3 different countries?

[martin-boundary]

Those are all upsides. Within 20 years, all that effort will be the core of a thriving high tech industrial base. You're thinking too small: China has 4 times the population of the US or twice the population of the EU, you're thinking too small.

Re:3 lines from 3 different countries?

[amanicdroid]

or lots of lessons will have to be re-learned across the lines and innovation will slow because it has to be replicated 3 different ways leaving them with antiquating systems that fall behind and eventually collapse spectacularly into 3 different but collective failures..

Re:3 lines from 3 different countries?

[martin-boundary]

(sorry about the repeated phrase in the previous comment)

I'm not sure the e.g. American railway model applies. The Chinese government is unlikely to let the industry fragment itself into privately run incompatible local monopolies. They're more likely to let the technologies compete for a while, and then make an executive decision when the time is right (which may well be political). With three different technologies, the long term risk is reduced, just like diversifying a portfolio (if one can afford it...).

Re:3 lines from 3 different countries?

[Anonymous Coward]

Near as I can tell, the point was that AmeriKKKa sux and anyone who criticizes our benevolent Chinese overlords is a "fucking idiot" and probably a xenophobic racist.

At least that seems to be the subtext underlying half of the comments on this thread.

Re:3 lines from 3 different countries?

[amanicdroid]

You make excellent points. I have little faith in political decisions working out well but who knows.

capitalists take note

[circletimessquare]

the greatest enemy capitalism has ever known throughout the history of economics is not communism or socialism, but corporatism. a corporation is a top down autocratic organization that seeks nothing but more profit, be damned any other concerns, like fairness or egaltarianism. when they get large enough, corporations dominate their marketplace by dirty tricks like undercutting competitors prices to destroy them, and rent seeking agreements once they own the whole marketplace by colluding with other large players. ideally, a government would regulate the marketplace and even the playing field for smaller competitors against larger players (oh, you believe no government regulation results in a cleaner more perfect capitalist marketplace? you're a naive idiot). unfortunately, in the west now, corporations corrupt the government and use the government's rules and regulatory powers to not bind them, but instead entrench their marketplace positions and their powers even more

so it is in the west: democracy corrupted by corporatism. but this is but a prelude for the coming truly insidious game. see, us silly westerners have championed capitalism for a long time, but us silly westerners also have this silly anchor around our neck called democracy, respect for the individual. the chinese have no such silly limitations: the citizens have no rights, they are slaves to the autocratic system. you know, autocracy: the corporate model of governance. the future is clear: the chinese autocracy will face the world as one monolithic internally cooperating perfect autocratic corporate behemoth. and it will simply devour the rest of the world. no one can compete with them in size, leverage, production capacity, capital reserves, anything: the chinese will dominate in all regards, and just destroy all else by dominating all marketplaces all over the world

and now that our oh-so-wise supreme court has made corporate donations perfectly legal (justice roberts, you are an asshole and the most anti-american person who has ever lived: protect citizens rights, not corporation rights, you scumbag), and now that there is no need for pesky inquiries like: where the source of the money comes form, the chinese will just buy our democracy outright. multinational corporations now gleefully use chinese workers without rights to make cheap crap. the chinese autocracy will simply buy these multinational eventually and those multinationals to do their bidding in the usa instead, in reverse. the professional prostitutes on the right who will spin anything for their corporate masters (scare us with government death panels when we talk about healthcare or government censorship when we talk about net neutrality): they'll just shill for the chinese owned mutlinationals by finding the right words to spin the complete sublimation of our democracy into corporatocracy as being a Real American (tm). and if the usa has no power against this, why and how would any smaller weaker country fare in the face of the ultimate corporate behemoth known as chinese autocracy?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission

welcome to the new world. chinese autocracy+capitalism=the ultimate corporate domination of the entire world

soon we will all be slaves to the power structure in beijing. soon we will all be like the typical chinese citizen: workers without rights, chattel to work the mines and factories, nothing more. our democracy flat out bought, sold, and desecrated by multimationals following orders form beijing

that's the future folks. isn't unregulated capitalism grand?

Re:capitalists take note

[circletimessquare]

show me where i am wrong and you have effectively opposed my points. however, just attacking me personally means you have nothing to say against my points, and therefore my points are correct

Re:capitalists take note

[northernfrights]

Wow, great retort there Anonymous Coward. Don't try to refute anything, just insult the poster. Lemme guess, you have no 'refudations' in mind, you just can't sit there and let someone talk bad about the Republican's and not have a stab at them.

Re:capitalists take note

[circletimessquare]

like what country?

Re:capitalists take note

[circletimessquare]

ok

and yet i am still waiting for a refutation, and not hearing any

Re:capitalists take note

[JonBuck]

Okay. Can you clarify something for me? How do you distinguish corporatism from capitalism? You imply that there is one, but you don't expand on that. Please do.

Re:capitalists take note

[circletimessquare]

intellectual property IS a joke. as you can see, the chinese have proven to you what a joke it is. the way to fight the chinese is to only do business with them and only allow their business into your country, as long as their business abides by certain standards, such as worker's rights. supporting intellectual property is not an effective strategy

furthermore, intellectual property is a concept that the chinese will just as happily wield against those in the west when their power is entrenched enough. the very idea of intellectual property is exactly the sort of anti-capitalist rent seeking monopolistic practices autocratic corporations like the chinese government engage in, that should be opposed, in the NAME OF capitalism and free markets

Re:capitalists take note

[circletimessquare]

capitalism is the competition between equals in the marketplace. corporatism is the abuse of and domination of the marketplace by its largest players

to maintain a truly capitalistic marketplace, you need government regulation to level the playing field between the large and the small (despite what some deluded naive fools will tell you otherwise). the unfortunate reality is that currently in the west corporations simply corrupt the government's regulatory laws and enforcement apparatus to entrench their position, rather than oppose their position, as the government naturally should

i'm not saying getting corporate corruption out of our government is easy, but i am saying that it is the only way we can move forward. because unfortunately, the chinese government will simply use our own corporate corruption against us, in the form of multinational corporations interfering with our internal politics with their money. if we don't fight corporate influence of our democracy, we are facing the ultimate victory of autocracy and corporatism over capitalism and democracy in the form of the rise of china, which will use our own unfortunate collusion with corporations against us eventually, as beijing becomes the eventual master of multinationals

Re:capitalists take note

[hackingbear]

It is incorrect to call China an "autocracy" as it is no longer ruled by one person. No politician there nowaday has the clout of Mao or Deng. It may be a totalitarian instead. Also if you actually go see in China, the workers do not have as much "rights" because there are so many people competing for works, especially blue collar labors. They have millions of new graduates every year entering workforce, for example. It is actually more of a market phenomena than government slavery. Generally the business market there are a lot more competitive than the US in many areas, while lacking in others.

Also one reason that large corporations dominate more and more is because the barrier in many fields are very high. For example, nobody can start a petro or pharmaceutical companies easily without billion dollars of investments to meet all the safety and quality requirements. There are actually large number of small businesses in China now, resulting in intense competition and quality problem. People, with consumerist minds, don't understand that high safety, environmental and quality standard tend to cause consolidation of suppliers and resulting corporations will have more control over the market. They will complain one way or the other.

Re:capitalists take note

[circletimessquare]

surely you can agree that the oligarchy (you are correct, better terminology needed) of the grumpy old men in beijing is a natural fit for corporations. and that the natural trajectory of our economic future is the eventual consolidation of multinationals under their control. the chinese are rapidly coming to own them. that is the threat i am worried about. does it bother you? or do you think this isn't the future?

Re:capitalists take note

[circletimessquare]

your use of the words fascism and anarchy are completely laughable. you don't understand these terms, so your thoughts are without probative value and need not be answered

Re:capitalists take note

[edfardos]

Well said!! End free trade with non-free countries.... or try communism, it's great! Please choose while you still can.

--edfardos

Re:capitalists take note

[atticus9]

Consumers have a ton of power as well, they could have chosen at any point simply not to buy cheap imported goods and it would've ended right then and there. It's only because hundreds of millions of people are buying those goods every week that the engine keeps going.

Likewise China's rise is largely due to a billion people working as hard as they can to make the country (and their own lives) the best it can be. If Americans (speaking in generalities) had the same resolve/objective world politics would be a lot different right now. But from my own experience, the vast majority of our work force is seeking to live a comfortable life while contributing as little as possible to the greater organization, citing rhetoric similar to the above, but toned down.

I don't really know what to say, if you have one group of people trying to be as lazy as possible, and another group of people trying to become as strong as possible. The latter will always win. Blaming corporations, capitalists, or politicians won't change that fact.

Honestly I think it would be good experience for everyone in the US to start a business, hire a bunch of employees, and see how fun it is to put up with a bunch people constantly shirking their responsibilities to go have fun, and then blaming you (as the immoral, omnipotent, profit-seeking, villain / business owner) for every bad thing that happens.

Re:capitalists take note

[circletimessquare]

that really is how you do it. you expect standards for the companies and countries who wish to do business with in your country, or you don't trade with them. that's really how to do it. unfortunately, the free flow of money in our politics means the opposite will happen: our standards will be destroyed under the corruptive power of corporate money, soon to be under the control of beijing

it will be very hard to fight the corrupting influence of money in our politics (thanks roberts court, you fucking antiamerican scumbags), but it is the only way forward

Re:capitalists take note

[iserlohn]

There is a movement dedicated to forwarding what you identify as corporatism.

- Fascism -

When corporations take over the government of a nation-state, what we get is a fascist state.

Re:capitalists take note

[circletimessquare]

"Consumers have a ton of power as well, they could have chosen at any point simply not to buy cheap imported goods and it would've ended right then and there"

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

you're a funny person

Re:capitalists take note

[iserlohn]

It's the same distinction between fascism and capitalism.

In capitalism, the market players are small and numerous, and have little to no effect on the political or regulatory environment as a single polity.

In fascism, there are few large players that control the markets, and controls in-effect the political and regulatory environment.

That's how it works, from a economic point of view.

Re:capitalists take note

[circletimessquare]

you have to use your terms more precisely. fascism is a nice scare word, but what you describe as an accepted ideology died in failure in world war ii. you need to update your terminology. i am not interested in debate about how and why fascism is corporatism, i am interested in defeating corporatism. as such, fascism, is just a bugaboo, a scary word, and not a useful intellectually valid concept

what we are really fighting is corporatism, and corporatism alone, corrupting our democracy. the oligarchy in beijing, which will eventually come to own all multinational corporations as their economic power becomes the greatest in the world, will wield their influence through corporations to subvert our democracy

that's the danger

fascism, communism: these are dead terms from the previous century. i will not use those terms because i wish to be taken seriously, and no one serious thinks of the idea of fascism or communism as valid ideologies anymore. one died in 1945, one died in 1990. the year is 2011. update your terminology please. i'm interested in intellectually useful terms, not scary boogeyman words from the dustbin of history

Re:capitalists take note

[dbIII]

the chinese will just buy our democracy outright

That couldn't happen, it's bribery by a foreign power! It would be just like President Ford getting a large donation for the Republican Party in person in Jakarta on the day Indonesia invaded East Timor, and the USA reversing their policy on East Timor on that day, even calling them (the same party that runs East Timor today) Communists! Oh wait. When the papers were released in 2005 we found out that was EXACTLY what happened.
Time to start learning Mandarin.

Re:capitalists take note

[circletimessquare]

wow, i didn't know that

yeah the status quo is pretty depressing. but i don't accept it, and a lot other people don't either. that still means something. maybe for not much longer, as fox news shows a lot of people can have their opinions assembled for them by corporate cash

Re:capitalists take note

[netsharc]

Whatever the Chinese system is, it seems to work for the moment (of course 1 Wikileaked cable did mention how the official numbers are all doctored up, and the officials look at other numbers, like amount of electricity consumed in the city, to really see the growth of the middle class), and just look at the Apple factory: the options are: you work in conditions you don't like, or you quit and go hungry. Or you kill yourself, but either way, they'll just replace you with the next farmer's son.

Interestingly I remember reading one article that mentioned how Chinese factories had to offer better working conditions to entice workers, because there were so many companies to work for and so few workers, but maybe this was before The Great World Economic Meltdown(TM).

Re:capitalists take note

[circletimessquare]

it's hard to maintain the balance. however capitalism unleashes a productivity that simply doesn't exist in other systems. we need capitalism, but we need to harness and muzzle it, or the negative side effects of capitalism will eat your society alive. capitalism is a beast, but a necessary beast. it must be controlled, but it must not be destroyed or ignored. or some other society will grow in power through capitalism and warp yours. you need to use capitalism. you just need to make sure it doesn't use you

Re:capitalists take note

[Doc Ruby]

You're distinguishing between "capitalism we want" and "capitalism we don't want" (corporatism). Corporatism is capitalism, it's just a kind of capitalism: an extreme one. Just as Chinese Communism is a kind of socialism, that has some extremes of capitalism along with some extremes of capitalism. But capitalism is simply the assignment of the highest value to capital (property), typically at the expense of devaluing either or both of labor and whatever's left that's not property (eg. the environment, ethics, capital in the public domain). Corporatism is indeed an extreme development of capitalism, though it's not very different from protocapitalist systems like feudalism.

Re:capitalists take note

[Doc Ruby]

Spain was a fascist state until the late 1970s, as was Argentina for years until that same time. Chile was fascist around that time. El Salvador was fascist through the 1980s.

Re:capitalists take note

[HotBits]

Corporations are people in the US. This is one of the unintended consequences when such a concept is taken too far.

For those of you unaware of the corporations = people thing, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood

Re:capitalists take note

[circletimessquare]

well said. now if only enough people in this world understand that corporatism is not the capitalism we want

ron paul recognizes this

http://www.ronpaul.com/2009-10-31/ron-paul-responds-to-michael-moore-its-corporatism-not-capitalism/

so maybe some on the right can join me in this fight against the corporate destruction of our democracy, which will eventually be wedded to chinese oligarchy

Re:capitalists take note

[Steauengeglase]

I've been debating this with myself for a long time and I've come to the following (admittedly infantile) conclusion:

Capitalism - Getting capital by providing a good or service.
Corporatism - Getting capital without ever providing anything.

Re:capitalists take note

[circletimessquare]

and north korea and cuba are still communist

but as ideologies that enjoyed wide support, or at least widespread consideration as major and important forces, fascism died in 1945 and communism died in 1990

Re:capitalists take note

[TheDarkMaster]

Do not note the angry replys. Many people simply cannot handle the ugly truth.

Re:capitalists take note

[TheDarkMaster]

You are a republican?

Re:capitalists take note

[Steauengeglase]

Just to give an example, I can remember a large corporation, I won't say the name because that will drag in a whole lot of baggage, who complained about a tax on a service they provided. The tax passed and the company complained that big government had wronged them and the consumer. A couple months later I saw the tax on my monthly invoice along with 5 other charges for "processing" this tax.

After a little digging into who had lobbied for it, lo-and-behold, it was the company who had spent the most money trying to get this tax initiated. They didn't want to piss off their customers, so they sent someone off to Congress to protest it.

Re:capitalists take note

[cyberzade]

I don't think such an action from Chinese to control the US Congress will be necessary. The system is already imploded and is in the state of paralysis that will get worse with the Republican control of the lower house.

Re:capitalists take note

[inf4mia]

the greatest enemy capitalism has ever known throughout the history of economics is not communism or socialism, but corporatism. a corporation is a top down autocratic organization that seeks nothing but more profit, be damned any other concerns, like fairness or egaltarianism. when they get large enough, corporations dominate their marketplace by dirty tricks like undercutting competitors prices to destroy them, and rent seeking agreements once they own the whole marketplace by colluding with other large players.

Yours is a populist post full of fear mongering that will never come to pass. You presume bigger is better which is demonstrably true by the last economic collapse. The largest tier financial institutions were decimated and many smaller institutions.

The larger an entity becomes, it is more efficient, but it is also more susceptible it is to rare, dramatic events (e.g. the housing collapse). Taleb calls these Black Swan Events. This is due to complexity growing exponentially as size increases. At some point, like the dinosaurs, an unexpected event happens, and the smaller mammals who are better able to adapt end up feasting on your corpse. Top down run organizations, like the Chinese economy, are very vulnerable to this type of risk in addition to a number of other inefficiencies it suffers from.

Re:capitalists take note

[CodeBuster]

soon we will all be slaves to the power structure in beijing. soon we will all be like the typical chinese citizen

Yeah, but maybe there will be cool cybernetics and we can all go on Shadowruns against the evil mega-corps. After all, street samurai sounds so much cooler than wage salve, wouldn't you agree?

Re:capitalists take note

[circletimessquare]

yeah... um, i'm sorry for sticking up for the american people and democracy instead of chinese oligarchy and corporations. why you think that is populist fearmongering and is therefore suspect is curious to me

and i'm glad you have so much faith that the chinese oligarchy is so weak because of rare events. apparently, its not important to you to think about right and wrong, its enough for you to depend upon rare events to magically make things right. that's a wonderful faith have. and i'm so glad you are so unconcerned with what is good for the world, the chinese people, or the american people. shouldn't that motivate your words? no: your position is something rare and magicla will happen and everything will be ok. pfffffffffft

my only response to your lack of concern would be that the only thing worse than false alarmism is false complacency

Re:capitalists take note

[Penguinshit]

You sure refudiated his arguments there, you betcha.

Re:capitalists take note

[circletimessquare]

only do business with corporations that abide by certain standards of behavior in regards to their workers. you don't need unions if the law of the land represents worker's interests

now obviously it will be very hard to get those rules in place and to enforce them and abide by them. but it's the only way forward

Re:capitalists take note

[sjames]

Of course as their real wages shrink and their jobs go overseas, they are forced to buy the cheapest products.

Re:capitalists take note

[lenski]

No one can make a decision in almost any sector of the economy without the government interfering.

Wrong.

My wife and I have been making capital deployment decisions involving significant fractions of our life savings without any government interference at all. Then we've worked long and had on those assets, still without government interference. Where safety issues could be involved, we always hired professionals, and made sure that the resulting work passed inspection. Among adults, this is commonly referred to as "being responsible".

Of course, when the "decision in almost any sector of the economy" affects millions, we see a little bit of interest on the part of "government", the group of people charged with enforcing policies and regulations that essentially represent the aggregate will of the population paying the bills. This little bit of interest on the part of "government" is often violently opposed by the decisionmakers. Entirely too frequently, these decisionmakers try to externalize risks and costs onto others who have insufficient influence to participate fully in the process. Increasingly, the decisionmakers win the argument, particularly with the help of uninformed people who haven't bothered to study history.

Double fail.

There are inevitably situations where "government" harbors control-freaks, incomptetent assholes, and people who have been bought and paid for to scarf up influence in order to enrich themselves or their asshole buddies. This phenomenon is seriously problematic and also needs to be corrected.

In my opinion, China's economy is being managed for better or worse by about the same number of people as in America's largest and most influential corporations. Neither situation is any good, and neither situation should be considered to be "healthy capitalism".

Capitalism requires full recognition of individual liberty, the right to own property including the rights to work that property for personal gain, and the ability to trust that that property won't be stolen, or the product of the individual's efforts.

The most important property a human being has is his or her time. Corporations, unlike humans, don't have that constraint, and the difference is subtle. But the integral of "subtle" over extended periods of time can be huge. The market power of the top 3-6 corporations in any given economic sector is increasingly concentrated. Soon that concentration of capital/power/influence will rival that of government.

Fascism is simply the linking of government and corporate power; it can arrive from government taking over private enterprise (totalitarian "socialism"), or from "private enterprise" taking over government (totalitarian fascism). But the result is the same: Too few hands manipulating the levers of power for their own benefit, unaccountable to the people who pay the bills.

Re:capitalists take note

[indi0144]

Like any country that have huge reserves of $resource and have no political and economical stability?

Theres is actually a debate here because Grey Star (Canada) and a Chinese corporation are planning on Gold mining in areas which could harm 3 of our most important drainage basins. Average people have reacted and have spread the voice trough YouTube videos and forwarding mails (News just started to talk about it once the public outrage started.) Likely outcome: The Government may revoke the licenses because of the potential ecological damage and the usual "who the f authorized this in the first place?"

Guess the difference is the threat level: Fighting a corp against putting mercury in our water (our case) against fighting a corp who is selling IP = creating jobs in China (your case).

You say: "Well we could just innovate again and create some jobs/I can get a new job" while We say: "You're not mining on that basin, sorry"

Re:capitalists take note

[circletimessquare]

this iceland?:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%932010_Icelandic_financial_crisis

Re:capitalists take note

[circletimessquare]

i am using the term correctly

you just referred to the chinese economic system as anarchy

if you really believe this you are a complete moron on the subject matter

Re:capitalists take note

[niftydude]

While I agree with the picture you paint, I'm not sure I can get on board with the anti-chinese sentiment. The system was badly broken by Justice Roberts' ruling, and since then, the average american worker's rights have been eroded at a staggering pace. Just look at the increase in numbers of people living right on the breadline.
It doesn't really matter if the heads of the multinational corporations screwing us are swiss, chinese, indian, or norwegian - human nature is the same everywhere, and the corruption that the level of wealth and power we are talking about is the same across all cultures.

Re:capitalists take note

[circletimessquare]

well then why don't you stop laughing at me and get serious and recognize our shared concerns is an opportunity to move beyond blind partisan ideology and to actually help our country

Re:capitalists take note

[circletimessquare]

i have nothing against china. i love chinese people and chinese culture. but i have a big problem with the oligarchy in beijing. i am not anti-chinese. i am anti-CCP

nothing would satisfy me more than to see chinese democracy. if i see that come to pass, i would WELCOME chinese meddling in my country's broken democracy as it is corrupted by corporate dollars and i have lost faith in it

but as it is, the oligarchy in beijing is here for awhile, and in that time, the buying of my government by corporate dollars will become a buying of my government by multinational corporations answering to foreign masters. those foreign masters could be from anywhere, as you say, but they mostly will be from beijing, because beijing is becoming the new economic center of the world

Re:capitalists take note

[circletimessquare]

good for canada

you guys wouldn't have a problem if we did a trade? new york state for alberta? i think everyone would be happier

Re:capitalists take note

[DNS-and-BIND]

You want to see racism and blind nationalism, come to China. I'm telling you they have nothing, nothing like the self-hatred that 2011 Americans have. Chinese would say the desire for something better is the foundation of the USA. Why do you think they send their children here for education? Education is the #1 above-all forget-everything-else important criterion for Chinese parents. Ever notice how American parents are not sending their children to China for college in droves?

Re:capitalists take note

[drsquare]

In capitalism by definition you don't need to provide anything, you just own the means of production and make money from other people providing the goods and services.

Re:capitalists take note

[florescent_beige]

Always enjoy your ideas circle.

The distinction I see is between free market capitalism and other kinds of capitalism. Obviously (I think?), business is not a natural proponent of competition, it is a natural proponent of profits. And, once established, the most direct way for a business to boost profit is to kill all forms of competition.

Giving business all the tools it needs to shut out competition has been the thrust of the American right since Regan. Deregulation and privileged access to power have given the advantage to the established players. If the right really was interested in the free market, they would be focused on things that can help new companies drive existing companies out of business, not preserve them.

Not to mention their obsession with essentially unproductive and socialist defense spending and strange cultural issues.

If the right really stood for what they say, they would be in favor of incorporation for almost everyone. Face it, most of us do our own retirement funds and insurance nowadays, we are all essentially working for ourselves. It should be official. Why exactly, can Joe Hustler write off his Beamer for driving to work while I can't write off my Toyota? I've never heard a convincing answer to that one.

Re:capitalists take note

[khallow]

the greatest enemy capitalism has ever known throughout the history of economics is not communism or socialism, but corporatism.

But what is corporatism? It's not corporate personhood. You pull out the usual flaky, grossly erroneous slashdot rant against the Citizens United v. FEC. The problem with that is that if you want to enforce the laws of the land, particularly the rights enumerated by the Constitution, you need something like corporate personhood in order for organized groups of people to have the rights of the people who compose the group. Violating the rights of large groups of people merely because you don't like what they do is still counter to the US Constitution, no matter how you dress it up.

Further, as for capitalism "threats", there's really only two closely related things that can count as threats. First, that private property is not inviolate. Second, that markets can be gamed via non-economic means to provide significant advantages. For all practical purposes, the only non-economic means in existence are government (official or de facto). Corporatism (as it has been described to me) is merely another defecting behavior by which someone takes other peoples' stuff.

Further, you imply that these threats are somehow discrete. Namely, that a threat can be pigeon-holed as socialist or corporatist, for example. In practice, such things are not, with synergy common between various anti-capitalist impulses. Obamacare provides a good example with handouts to corporations and allegedly poor people occurring simultaneously.

I have two proposed solutions to the problem. First, reduce the power and extent of government. Second, rigorous, without bias nor exception, enforce the laws of the land. For example, in the US, there's remarkably hypocritical exceptions to US law for Congress. They don't have to follow all the labor or environmental laws that the rest of the US has to follow. This leads to US Congress having one of the most polluting coal burning plants in the US, for example. Also, there are a number of laws that are selectively enforced, only when someone causes trouble (or is the target of harassment by the authorities). Drug laws are a good example of this. Being caught in possession of drugs can result in a verbal warning through to significant jail time combined with seizure of assets nearby at the time of the bust.

It's quite likely that you may have heard of these proposed solutions numerous times before. Thus, it should come as no surprise that these two principles have guided design of both the US government and numerous state governments as well. While it's obvious that corruption and other such problems have continued, the idea is to mitigate the harm in an imperfect system, not prevent it from ever existing in some ideal, but unlivable utopia.

Re:capitalists take note

[Doc Ruby]

Not entirely well said:

Chinese Communism is a kind of socialism, that has some extremes of capitalism along with some extremes of capitalism.

should say

Chinese Communism is a kind of socialism, that has some extremes of capitalism along with some extremes of socialism.

But close enough I suppose.

BTW, while Paul is right to hate the current corporatist system, he's wrong where he says about the current system that Michael Moore hates "It has nothing to do with capitalism." It has everything to do with capitalism, as I said. It's capitalism gone too far: without regulation to protect the people from it (and it from itself).

Ron Paul is the most reliable voter (Appendix One, pg. 37) against any regulation that puts Greenhouse pollution costs on the real books, so economics can govern it properly. Paul is also a theocrat. He's a corporate anarchist: a "libertarian" who believes the government has jurisdiction only over the army and the police - and the police don't have jurisdiction over corporations (only the market has power there). Ron Paul is nuts. But even crazy people can tell that corporatism is killing us.

Re:capitalists take note

[ub3r n3u7r4l1st]

I came from the same background, and this is essentially a symptom of blind belief of western values.

Many international students came from China, once arrived in the U.S. , becomes proud of their motherland and show their shitty five-star flag and show how they love China etc.

Trust me, if they are given the chance to obtain U.S. citizenship, they will be queued up in line in no time.

Re:capitalists take note

[Doc Ruby]

Not really, except that all of economic history is a continuum rather than a series of strict categorical systems. There is no "communism" as economics, which is the collective ownership of all property, total elimination of all classes, and indeed no government. Chinese "Communism" is an extreme evolution of socialism that perverts socialism, as it clearly values capital more than society, which is the essential valuation of capitalism rather than socialism - not an extreme, but a regression. Corporatism isn't a perversion of capitalism, but rather an extreme of it. There is also a difference between a corporation and a state, even one ruled by a party monopoly without democracy: the state does not maximize the value return on property, even in China, though that's what corporations do.

Re:capitalists take note

[circletimessquare]

i don't agree with much of what ron paul says. i just want some of the ron paul supporters to see what i am saying is not so far from what they believe about capitalism

Re:capitalists take note

[Doc Ruby]

I agree with you.

Re:capitalists take note

[circletimessquare]

no, they really are dead. i'm not talking about conspiracy theories, i'm talking about widespread public support. widespread public support existed for communism before 1990, now no more. widespread public support existed for fascism before 1945, now no more. that makes these ideologies dead. no one can plausibly or credibly call themselves a communist or a fascist and appeal to a large swath of the population ever again. and that is a permanent sea change

Re:capitalists take note

[giampy]

While the Chinese government IS corrupt and totalitarian, (and you might call it oligarghy), i would still classify it as a government that has big power, not as a corporation. They have 50 years economic deployment plans (no corporation usually bothers to do long-term thinking), and they seem (to me at least) to care about the well being and instruction of the people or things like growth and redistribution of resources, if anything for self preservation. E.g. they also do stuff like funding universities left and right, worrying about basic research and the like.

Heck, they actually own several corporation. The difference between to own and being owned is whether decisions are dictated by short term profits or not, and for now it definitely seems not. Actually i think the staggering success of the Chinese economics politics in the last decades is that they have made use of free market rules (capitalism, if you like that definition) BUT the government has serious power to dictate the rules and distribute the resources at will. Whether it will stay like that or even Chinese government will eventually be owned by corporations it's early to say.

The fact that human rights for common people in china are not existent or not enforced does not seem to play a big part one way of another. In fact while you can make the case that human rights are sometimes a limit to corporate behavior in the US, (but that is a very optimistic view IMO), you can also make the case that corporations in the US are treated as people, so they can also use "people" rules to have it their way, in addition to paying lobbyists to create the rules they want.

Re:capitalists take note

[inf4mia]

I made no morale arguement about the Chinese autocracy, so about 2/3rds of your post is fallacious (i.e. straw man arguments). You didn't even bother trying to refute any of the points I made in my post.

A top down economy versus a more spontaneous and decentralized one is not even a fair fight to be honest. Saying I'm complacent does not even begin to understand my position regarding the U.S. economy. I am not afraid of a Chinese hegemony, it does not follow that I believe that the U.S. economy will remain preeminent. I simply believe that the Chinese economy will not dominate for a number of reasons (e.g. teetering mortgage sector, upcoming major structural transitions that will be required, etc.)

Re:capitalists take note

[circletimessquare]

the false alarmist, and the false complacent, two types of fucking ignorant morons, one of which you are a shining example of

Re:capitalists take note

[ShooterNeo]

Absolutely. Capitalism has one huge advantage : it distributes the decision making between all the actors. Theoretically, the collective actions of millions of people composing the "market" control what is rewarded or punished and thus control the economy.

Disadvantages are also huge. Millions of people can be systematically lied to, tricked, and fooled. People in general are short sighted by nature, so you have an inherent advantage in selling them things that give immediate returns at the cost of future losses. (such as companies selling stock...the ones who shout about this quarter's incredible profits (at the expense of paying the maintenance on the firm's equipment...like BP does)

The governmental machinery can be manipulated by the richest corporations into creating an environment that favors them at the expense of everyone else. If someone cheats the system or gets lucky they can accumulate colossal fortunes that appear to dwarf the amount of money they could ever conceivably earn through their own labor.

The best system would be one that uses government to make wise decisions, such as taxing pollution, massive spending on infrastructure and R&D, and taxing the extremely wealthy. Also the government would break up obvious monopolies such as trade guilds of "physician training schools" who artificially limit supply. And it would not allow monopolies such as "banks" to have inordinate power over the economy.

But the followers of Ayn Rand and half the population don't believe this. They literally believe that pure unregulated capitalism, where the strong can stack the deck against the week, is the right way to go.

The sad thing, the majority of Republicans aren't rich. They NEVER WILL BE. They vote to defend the possibility of attaining a status that 99.9% of them will never reach.

Re:capitalists take note

[inf4mia]

the false alarmist, and the false complacent, two types of fucking ignorant morons, one of which you are a shining example of

Actually, I believe that the U.S. is on the road to crumbling from within due in part to morale and cultural erosion and to a lesser extent corporatism. This is the way most empires crumble (from within) and I believe that will be the way the U.S. ultimately falls.

I'm far more pessimistic regarding America's future than almost everyone I know. I just disagree with you regarding what the major threat is.

Re:capitalists take note

[circletimessquare]

common simple and easy cynicism is a poor replacement for true intelligence. your thinking is a dime a dozen, and just not very bright

Re:capitalists take note

[inf4mia]

common simple and easy cynicism is a poor replacement for true intelligence. your thinking is a dime a dozen, and just not very bright

Fallacious arguments (e.g. straw men and ad hominem) is no substitute for a real discussion. As far as I can tell, all you have really done in your responses is presume to know my positions (which I am virtually certain you do not) and to refuse an actual discussion. Perhaps I missed something though...

Maybe I said or did something to offend you if. If I did, I can assure you that it was not my intent but rather to have a vigorous discussion.

Re:capitalists take note

[circletimessquare]

yes, you missed the point where the quality of your thoughts have led me to believe you are a fucking idiot. no straw man or ad hominem involved, just a qualitative, honest appraisal of your intelligence from what you have committed to comment

your cynicism is common and typical, your concerns betray a simpleton's cognitive grasp

Re:capitalists take note

[inf4mia]

It is amazing to me that you can, in the space of 24 hours or so, go from calling me complacent and ignorant, to a common cynic and still remain so confident in your assessment of others whom you do not know. Why not just admit you have no idea exactly what I think? ... That would be forward progress.

Your denial of engaging in ad hominem and especially straw man fallacies cannot be taken seriously.

Re:capitalists take note

[circletimessquare]

my opinion of you is based on what you have written. in what other way should i derive my opinion of you?

Re:capitalists take note

[Tim C]

Surely then you are providing (access to and use of) the means of production?

Yep, and look at the Airbus A320

[YesIAmAScript]

China bought a number, with an agreement for Airbus to then build a number in China and not long after that the Chinese companies will have what they need from their relationship with Airbus and will then instead just build their own planes without Airbus making a cent.

Its unclear why Airbus made this deal with China. Could it be just shortsightedness?

Re:Yep, and look at the Airbus A320

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked for a high tech company where the Chinese just seized the imported equipment outright and stopped payments. No doubt everything was duplicated and what software wasn't already transferred was reverse engineered. Posting anon...

Re:Yep, and look at the Airbus A320

[Anonymous Coward]

You answered the question yourself. The immediate sale of the planes goes directly to your bottom line, while the effects of China producing knock-off Airbuses won't be felt for some time still.
However, we should also remember that even if China imports all planes as a whole, they will still be able to reverse engineer them, it will just take longer. Or maybe they'll learn to build their own planes.
So maybe a little short-sightedness wasn't actually as bad a decision as it might seem, since the long haul is a bit of a gamble. Do we write down profit now, or hope that we can continue to outdo China?

Re:Yep, and look at the Airbus A320

[gman003]

Because if Airbus didn't make the deal, Boeing would, and then Airbus wouldn't have the consolation of "sold a bunch of planes to China before they figured out how to do it themselves".

Re:Yep, and look at the Airbus A320

[TFAFalcon]

You're looking at the whole thing from the wrong angle. The CEO won't care what happens to the company 10 years down the line. By then he'll have taken his golden parachute and cashed in his stock options.

The only thing that matters is the next few bottom lines. So the answer is to get as much money NOW, then run away before the shit hits the fan.

Re:Yep, and look at the Airbus A320

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but what more do we expect out of an MBA. It's time to put engineers who care about more then profit back into the CEO offices. BP is a perfect example, a real engineer would not accept the loss of pride that the disaster caused... My grandfather was a CEO engineer of a 500 man company that produced overhead gantry cranes. One of the things he did was to order all of his welding supplies from the smaller of 2 companies in town. Why because if it went bankrupt the larger company would then charge more then smaller company was now charging. In his company the employees on the own showed up an 1/2 hour early to work to discuss and plan the day out along with the usually water cooler chit-chat. Which is just unheard of in most offices and shops. Obviously not everyone was this early but a large percent was. He personal did show until 10 and then usually slept a little more. However, he saw ever mail coming into the company which enable him correct his employs and personally solve ongoing customer complaints.

Re:Yep, and look at the Airbus A320

[Dutchmaan]

Yes, that's the problem. Shortsighted goals have fueled our financial woes. China will succeed for the time being because their goal isn't to make a fast buck, It's to strengthen their global position. China will become dominant because of our shortsighted greed. Not to worry though, because even China isn't immune to the corruption of 'values' that comes with success. China will have It's moment in the sun then fall to the same corruption that has destroyed empires for ages past. It all goes in cycles folks and no one rules forever.

Re:Yep, and look at the Airbus A320

[rabtech]

Well everyone in the 1980s thought Japan would rule the world and own everything but internal problems proved that there were limits to their power... just as any nation has limits. We in the US often forget our own limitations because we're used to having our own way.

China has severe internal issues; a massive property bubble that makes the US housing crisis seem tame by comparison; local governments are addicted to land sales to fund their massive infrastructure projects, loaded down with loans from the state banks. Unless you truly believe that empty apartment blocks or even empty cities are a good investment and property prices will always go up that game has to end at some point and when it does China won't be able to hide the pain. Plus massive corruption and cheating (how can you make decisions at the top when all your stats are based on outright falsified data?). Official government statistics say that about 40% of the academic papers published from Chinese Universities contain falsified research and that's just what they will admit.

Did I also mention the leadership/succession problem? How many times in world history has some political succession BS thrown a wrench into a country's previously bright future?

I'll put it another way: if China gets too annoying and the EU+US slap a 50% tariff on Chinese imports who do you think will blink first? The consumers who have to pay $5.99 for that plastic toy instead of $2.99? Or the communist authorities in China facing millions of unemployed laborers with no job prospects, nowhere to go, and nothing to do? The political situation in China is far less straightforward and stable than people suppose.

Re:Yep, and look at the Airbus A320

[Dachannien]

Russia recently got dinged on the same issue with regard to the Su-27, which they allowed the Chinese to manufacture under license but that the Chinese then copied, and now they're refusing to manufacture the Su-35 in China as a result.

Re:Yep, and look at the Airbus A320

[buybuydandavis]

You're looking at the whole thing from the wrong angle. The CEO won't care what happens to the company 10 years down the line. By then he'll have taken his golden parachute and cashed in his stock options.

Yep. We don't have the interests of corporate officers properly aligned with the long term health of corporations. They are in a position to loot the corporations they "serve", and do.

Re:Yep, and look at the Airbus A320

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Unless you truly believe that empty apartment blocks or even empty cities are a good investment and property prices will always go up that game has to end at some point and when it does China won't be able to hide the pain.

Here are a bunch of satellite photos of these "ghost cities" - I can't say if the commentary is accurate or misleading, but at the very least there are practically no cars visible on any of the streets which suggests that most of it is true.

Re:Yep, and look at the Airbus A320

[91degrees]

Well, China would have managed to get hold of the planes somehow. They could eventually work out how to make a plane as good as Airbus and Boeing can manage. Perhaps this deal will speed it up and perhaps it won't but this way they definitely made billions and had they not done so they definitely wouldn't.

Re:Yep, and look at the Airbus A320

[roman_mir]

Japan made a fatal mistake of listening to dunce-cretins like Bernanke and devaluing their currency in the 90s to subsidize the worthless US consumer (worthless in a sense, that US is paying for the consumer goods with money it gets on credit from the producer nations, rather than with produced goods.)

China is still doing this, but they are waking up. They are starting to diversify from US debt and US will find itself on a brink of a complete societal collapse once China is no longer buying and holding US bonds but is dumping them and US monetizes all of its debt.

IF the West imposes tariffs on Chinese goods, guess what the Chinese will do: they will stop importing them into the West. But at the same time they will stop pegging their currency to US dollar, pushing their currency lower as US prints more and more money.

Guess what?! China has more than enough customers INSIDE China to buy all of the goods China produces.

Guess what?! The West has lost so much capital (investment/factories) to Asia that it will take the West decades to rebuild all that capital, and it has NO SAVINGS! So what is it going to rebuild it with? The standard monetary policy of the West is to print money. This does not translate into capital, it translates into inflation and loss of purchasing power. It ONLY works as long as other nations, that are producer nations and are importing goods into the West are WILLING to peg their currencies to the currencies of the West.

In short:

China does NOT NEED USA (and other Western countries) to consume the products China produces.

USA NEEDS CHINA to produce and import the cheap goods.

The tariffs will only hurt the countries that are setting them, not the producers.

Whatever you think about the problems that China has in housing, the other countries have much more of a problem with this.

Should China stop pegging their currency to the currencies of the West, the Chinese all of a sudden become MUCH richer and all of a sudden they can afford all of those houses, which will become cheaper in real terms.

Guess what also, if China stops pegging their currency to the West, their currency will SKYROCKET and US and other Western nations will LOSE even MORE capital, as everybody will buy Chinese currency and push all of their savings into Chinese banks.

--

It's over for the West, and the reason for this problem is the kind of life the people now think they are owed by their respective societies. There is no way to have all the economic 'justice' and not to pay the ultimate price of a collapsed state for it.

Re:Yep, and look at the Airbus A320

[damburger]

It is a different situation; China has natural resources where as Japan does not to any big extent. China still has plenty of growth potential on its current track, because of the huge areas of the country that are still greatly underdeveloped. I consider it unlikely that a property boom is an existential threat to the current regime; unlike western nations (my country the UK being a perfect example) they aren't hanging their entire economy on house prices. They still *make* things and utilise physical resources.

Re:Yep, and look at the Airbus A320

[Inthewire]

I read this many times. WTF was your point?

Buy to build?

[leenks]

"Another strategy is buy-to-build. The first three trains were imported as a whole; the second three were assembled with imported parts; subsequent trains contain more and more Chinese made parts."

In other words, the first were imported. The next were partially imported. The last are clones, without paying patent royalties. Nice.

Re:Like college and grad school

[TFAFalcon]

Are they respecting patents on the technologies used to make those parts? And are they designing their own parts/machines or just making copies of the imported ones?

America for sale dot com.

[elucido]

Click here to bribe our politicians, write our laws, and download our jobs.

Re:America for sale dot com.

[lenski]

Didn't like it then, and didn't like being called "an America hater" for being pissed off about the way a few executives were fucking over other countries' workers for short term gain.

Don't like it now, and don't like being called "an America hater" for being pissed off about the way a few executives are fucking over their own country's workers for short term gain.

Same shit, different decade.

Re:America for sale dot com.

[aliquis]

Click here to bribe our politicians, write our laws, and download our jobs.

Funny, you're the ones writing ours :D / Swede

What corporations?

[elucido]

What corporations are state owned US intelligence agency backed corporations? Name some.

When you lose your job thank your enemies.

[elucido]

In China, India, and those other countries.

Re:When you lose your job thank your enemies.

[HungryHobo]

which is great for the richest 1 percent of the population but unfortunatly with the exception of a handful with really exceptional skills everyone else is stuck buying from the company store in the company town earning less in a week than it takes to live for a week.

"You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt."

stop listening to fox.

Re:When you lose your job thank your enemies.

[HiThere]

You did? So will jiggering with the statistics some more.

FWIW, I don't believe it when CNN says it either. If you do, well, that's a fair comment on your understanding of the situation.

I *suspect* the current real unemployment is over 20%, possibly over 30%. That's not the official statistics, of course, but those are "managed" in many ways, and have been "adjusted" repeatedly over a period of at least decades to make the current administration look good.

There's really only two ways to improve the balance of trade. Either import less or export more. A hefty import tax would decrease the imports, but the reactions from other countries would hurt the exports.

Another alternative is to cut taxes on any goods that are exported. This has probably already been done, though. (I'm clearly no expert, so I'm just going down the logic tree.)

Depressing wages isn't going to help much, as minimum wage is already insufficient to live on. People on minimum wage MUST find extra ways of earning cash. What they do is often illegal, but that just means it's tax free.

Of course, the big booming industry in the US is slave labor camps...excuse me, prison labor. We are the leading country in the number of citizens serving in such places. More than any other country in the world either in absolute numbers or as a percentage of our population. But somehow we still can't compete with China. (Probably too many guards at too high a salary, but they are politically untouchable.)

The only other place to look is among the wealthy. Most of the wealth of the country is owned or controlled by a very few people. This means that that is the only place where real savings can be made. (This is obvious even without considering the other factors that I mentioned, but I wanted to be complete.)

Actually, to be complete I should consider the middle-class, but they are a vanishing breed. They used to be a major part of the wealth of the country, but in the past several decades they have been systematically pillaged, and their number and the proportion of the wealth that they control have already been shrinking. They do still exist, but they are becoming economically irrelevant. And as their wealth is already shrinking, the only thing that cutting their salaries would accomplish is their earlier extermination.

Do you think that's an overly harsh statement of the situation? I don't. And if you trust the media, I have to ask you "Who sets their editorial policies?" Hint: It's not the editor any more. That went out during the 1980's, except in very small publications. And the small publications have been being bought up also. I can't think that it's a profitable investment, not directly, but it allows the editorial policy to be set by those who own them. And some people find that a quite profitable investment.

Fox is, as you suggest, targeted at only the most gullible. But *ALL* the major media are owned by extremely wealthy participants. Usually through a chain of intermediates. Mr. Gates didn't need to tell the director of NBC what line to take. That was done by someone who was appointed by someone who was appointed by him. I *guess* he doesn't do this anymore, but I'm not sure. I don't know who *did* recently buy MSNBC. But not being able to point to an individual just tells me that I don't know which oligarch is controlling that voice. I still know that it's one oligarch or another.

E.g.: Where did you hear that FOX went to court to defend their right to demand that the reporter in a news program lie (knowingly misinform) the viewers about what happened? Can you point to a major media channel that gave it even moderately prominent coverage?

Re:Just name one!

[pitchpipe]

Um, okay. In-Q-Tel:In 1999 we chartered ... In-Q-Tel. ... While we pay the bills, In-Q-Tel is independent of CIA. - George Tenet. I don't know about you, but if someone is paying all of my bills it'd be hard for me to claim independence.

Industrial Policy

[Doc Ruby]

It is more than just savvy business wheeling and dealing, since it's the Chinese government wheeling and dealing. Which means it's a monopoly: only the government agency can negotiate for that business inside China. And only the specific Chinese corps the government picks can get the business. Those picked corps are picked not necessarily for the best interests of China, but rather for whatever is in the best interest of the government officials with the power to pick them. Which might or might not be the best interests of China. That's Communism.

But it's also industrial policy, which is indeed savvy business wheeling and dealing. The US doesn't have anything like that, except for the corruption part where some industries have orgs that lobby our government to do business with foreign governments that require their government to mediate such international trade, or where the US government does occasionally require our government to play that role in foreign trade, where the orgs use some method other than competitive bids/RFPs to pick which members get the business. The US could have an industrial policy as effective in strategy as China's extreme one, but without requiring the government to actually conduct the negotiations. Just review the completed deals to ensure they comply with the policy, perhaps just random samples plus any over a large value threshold (which would pay in taxes enough to fund the review).

Instead, the US abandons industrial policy, and therefore industrial strategy. And watches China ascend at our expense. Though the top US capitalists have already invested in China's industries, so China's gain is their gain, while they've divested from US liabilities, so our expense is not theirs.

Re:Industrial Policy

[LordNacho]

Instead, the US abandons industrial policy, and therefore industrial strategy. And watches China ascend at our expense. Though the top US capitalists have already invested in China's industries, so China's gain is their gain, while they've divested from US liabilities, so our expense is not theirs.

It's not a zero-sum game. Both the Chinese and the Americans can benefit from trading with each other. Presumably that's why they do.

Re:Industrial Policy

[Synonymous Homonym]

The US doesn't have anything like that, except for the corruption part where some industries have orgs that lobby our government to do business with foreign governments that require their government to mediate such international trade, or where the US government does occasionally require our government to play that role in foreign trade, where the orgs use some method other than competitive bids/RFPs to pick which members get the business.

What do you mean? Those instances where military intelligence was used to make sure international contract bids went to Boeing, or where US industries and government wrote the legislation of foreign countries?

Re:Industrial Policy

[Doc Ruby]

Yes, that's part of the corruption - not just any US corps get that kind of government sponsorship. Just the ones in a crony relationship. But in China, the crony relationship isn't just bribery/graft. It's an industrial policy designed to improve the domestic industry and the economy it supports. In the US, those results are incidental at best.

Re:Industrial Policy

[enrevanche]

It is not communism, it is fascism.

Re:Industrial Policy

[Doc Ruby]

Not really, since in the US it is possible for corporate overlords to fail and be replaced by others without taking the entire country with it (despite the notable exceptions of the banks and the carmakers). In China, that is not possible. The flexibility for some people to fail without their failure damaging others who didn't volunteer to take part is essential to a national interest. We can see that in China, where its own homegrown attempts to develop rail technology failed, and had to get bailed out by importing the tech for the domestic producers to copy. In China that is the rule, while in the US that is the exception.

Re:Industrial Policy

[Doc Ruby]

The top US capitalists net benefit. The other 99.9%+ of Americans net lose. That's why we do it.

Re:Industrial Policy

[Doc Ruby]

It's not fascism when the state controls the corporations. Or all the other differences of China from actual fascism.

It's not "communism", either, but there is no actual communism practiced, or ever has been: universal mutual ownership of all property; no government; etc. But as "Communism" is defined by what is practiced in its name, China's certainly is, and indeed does use many of the techniques and structures true communism prescribes for a socialist transition to communism: state monopoly on power governed by a party monopoly on government; propaganda; central economic planning; mass extermination of political threats; etc.

Can a Mandarin speaker comment on translation?

[guanxi]

Could someone fluent in Mandarin comment on the translation? I'm especially interested in this translation: "The goal of the project is to boost our economy, not theirs." Is the implication that the Chinese gov't wants their trading partners to suffer, or that their partners' situation just isn't important?

China's economy benefits when their trading partners economies benefit. If it's the former (or even the latter, to a degree), that suggests they have other priorities in mind.

Re:Can a Mandarin speaker comment on translation?

[Komma]

Could someone fluent in Mandarin comment on the translation? I'm especially interested in this translation: "The goal of the project is to boost our economy, not theirs." Is the implication that the Chinese gov't wants their trading partners to suffer, or that their partners' situation just isn't important?

China's economy benefits when their trading partners economies benefit. If it's the former (or even the latter, to a degree), that suggests they have other priorities in mind.

As a native speaker, my only comment after RTFAing is that the phrase doesn't exist in the article. The entire article is about how they use strong handed methods to limit negotiating power of their trading partners. The wording is something along the lines of "With government officials leading the project, we leave them very little bargaining power. Either they give in and offer up their IPs, or they get out. And in the case of Siemens railway, even though negotiations broke down once, they came back for a later round."

Re:Can a Mandarin speaker comment on translation?

[Lead Butthead]

the phrase doesn't exist in the article

Bull shit. See paragraph 12 of TFA (referencing events in July 2003)

Re:Can a Mandarin speaker comment on translation?

[poity]

Native speaker here also. It's in the 3rd paragraph in the 2nd section after the introduction titled "Open the door or close it?" The preceding context is "the decision to import foreign rail technology had already been made." The next sentence can be translated as "the intimations of the higher ups is that 'the development of the project should promote our economy, rather than promote their economy' and [those involved] should act upon considerations that are advantageous to China when acquiring these technologies."

The way it's worded doesn't cast those "higher ups" in a bad light (considering every country would prioritize their own economy), but I think it's not entirely unreasonable to also read that as an implicit request to achieve a balance in maximizing Chinese economic benefits while minimizing foreign economic benefits -- that would be the way I'd understand it if I were a shrewed political underling.

Re:Can a Mandarin speaker comment on translation?

[billyswong]

Could someone fluent in Mandarin comment on the translation? I'm especially interested in this translation: "The goal of the project is to boost our economy, not theirs." Is the implication that the Chinese gov't wants their trading partners to suffer, or that their partners' situation just isn't important?

China's economy benefits when their trading partners economies benefit. If it's the former (or even the latter, to a degree), that suggests they have other priorities in mind.

Although my mother tongue is Cantonese, not Mandarin, such line is indeed there in the original article. It's in the 3rd paragraph after the section subtitle "Door close or open?", quoted as a thought from the higher-up. It didn't really said of "goal" but the meaning is mostly accurate, just that the "not theirs" emphasis were not there.

However, I must say the translation posted here is a little bit twisted, since I am quite sure the implication of that line is not about making the trading partners suffer but only about making themselves the more benefited in the trading process.

Re:Can a Mandarin speaker comment on translation?

[ShooterNeo]

Do you think Nike tries to benefit the host country when it opens up a Malaysian sweatshop? Or Dell? Or any other U.S. company that outsources operations overseas to save on costs?

The answer is no. Every decision made by these firms is to benefit the upper management and the stockholders. (priorities generally in that order). If the host country benefits overall, that is a coincidence from the perspective of the corporation.

China is doing exactly what they should in regards to this. If our corporations give away our technology it's not the fault of China.

Finally ...

[PPH]

.... we find out what the

4) ?????

means.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Like college and grad school

[AK Marc]

Oh, so they are acting in exactly the same manner as the US has in the past? And it was ok then, but not ok if yellow people are doing it?

The way I see it, the elephant in the room is xenophobia and racism (or, at the very least, rabid nationalism). The US companies subvert patents when they can. So do the Chinese. The only difference is the level to which they can get away with violations, not the goals or methods employed.

Give a man a fish, teach a man to fish

[RightwingNutjob]

Not that I'm begrudging anyone success or prosperity, but it seems that the way the Chinese are operating in this respect screws everyone over in the long run. The buy-and-clone mentality can put Western manufacturers out of business, and since all the Chinese companies did was reverse-engineer, they don't really build up internal expertise of the level they just quashed. And just like Embrace,Extend,Extinguish, in the long run innovation doesn't happen as fast as it might have.

Re:Give a man a fish, teach a man to fish

[Komma]

RTFA. The article isn't about reverse engineering. It's about making their trading partners give up their technology willingly to the Chinese, or they don't get a piece of the market. And if you're talking about innovation, then when did importing technology to build reliable and stable railways ever had anything to do with innovation?

Re:Give a man a fish, teach a man to fish

[jopsen]

Or perhaps western companies will continue to innovate, and keep their business going that way...

Re:Give a man a fish, teach a man to fish

[ironjaw33]

And if you're talking about innovation, then when did importing technology to build reliable and stable railways ever had anything to do with innovation?

It has a lot to do with innovation. I'd expect that the companies that developed the rail technology spent decades and $MILLIONS on research and development with the expectation of $BILLIONS in income in production and licensing fees. Instead, the Chinese simply copy the technology and build and sell their own at a cheaper price (since they didn't put up the time or cash to do the research). Anyone doing business with the Chinese certainly has less incentive to innovate since their time and money put into research won't produce a profit.

Re:Give a man a fish, teach a man to fish

[RightwingNutjob]

My unscientific sampling two of Chinese engineering students rotating through at a good American engineering school before going back suggests to me that it's a larger value of ``soon'' than you might expect given the outward show of progress. Yes, they're dumping zillions into building up institutions, but in trying to catch up on 200+ years of Western experience in under a generation, there's a certain something missing. They're nowhere near cargo-cult level, but they're closer to it than we are in the west, hence my original comment.

Re:Like college and grad school

[Dare nMc]

My understanding is yes to all. But likely not completely. I have family retired from GE loco, years ago they sold around 50 locomotives to China. First 5 were complete shipped from USA, next 20 were increasingly built in china. Last 25 were left to china. So they bought licenses, made changes, and likely wouldn't hesitate to go beyond the license if desired. GE is probably betting they will be ahead of china by the time the contact is done, and that it is beyond china to maintain the ability, let alone expand and compete. Exactly what patents are ment to be, a head start, but not a permanent monopoly (for the inventors).

USA didnt succeed

[woolio]

excellent points

people can look at Russia and easily see kt as a failure of Communism. Why do people assume that the USA is a good example of a successful capitalistic government?

(perhaps if success is defined more broadly than GDP the point becomes more clear)

[is a student that graduates with a C average a success?]

Re:Like college and grad school

[Seraphim1982]

GE probably doesn't care as long as they get their service contract. I'm not sure of locomotives fall into this catagory but a lot of the big GE items (tubines, medical equipment, etc.) are sold at cost or with extreamly slim margins. The place they make their money is on the service contracts. So if GE can somehow sell 25 service contracts without to build the locomotives they are probably thrilled.

Consumers have very little power

[SageMusings]

That's a fallacy.

Walk through a grocery store or mall. Where are the non-Chinese goods? You can't find them no matter the price. And while I don't shop Walmart, it's common knowledge they strong-arm their suppliers into outsourcing in their fervor to shave a nickel off their costs. Electronics, textile, heavy machinery, even pharma is nearly entirely off-shore. We've only services, aircraft manufacture, and agriculture left.

As a consumer (we stopped being citizens long ago), show me where my power is? The only American thing left to purchase anymore is politicians and I don't have that kind of money.

Re:Consumers have very little power

[jwhitener]

It is a little less convenient than being able to walk into a store near your house, but there are some online options. Ed Schultz promotes these quite often:

http://madeinusaforever.com/
http://www.allamericanclothing.com/
http://www.usacoffeecompany.com/

Maybe they should patent this ancient strategy....

[Bob_Who]

....We can just insist that we thought of it first, its our idea, so you can't have it anymore. How's that working for ya?

Its funny how originality only matters if everyone copies you.

"Trade secrets" is an oxymoron: Trade and Secrecy are not mutually exclusive. Its hard to own an idea after you show everyone what it is. Reality: What a concept!

Re:Just name one!

[elucido]

Um, okay. In-Q-Tel:In 1999 we chartered ... In-Q-Tel. ... While we pay the bills, In-Q-Tel is independent of CIA. - George Tenet. I don't know about you, but if someone is paying all of my bills it'd be hard for me to claim independence.

Thats not the same at all. Yes the CIA does have contracts with corporations including In-Q-Tel, but it does not mean the CIA is the only group involved.

It also isn't the same as say a state run oil company, a state run bank, a state run car company, a state run weapons company. These are companies which take money from the US government out of patriotic duty rather than take it from the Chinese government, because these companies were stated in America and are run by American citizens.

Now you look at the Chinese companies started in China, their companies are not just state funded but completely run and controlled by intelligence agencies. Down to the level of the employees being agents.

I'm not saying the CIA doesn't do this, I'm saying China does it as routine while in the USA you have to look hard to find rare exceptions like In-Q-Tel.

Re:Like college and grad school

[guruevi]

No, what happens is that China buys the first 5 loco's for 5M/piece and as they progressed they kept paying the same money for less stuff. In the end they just paid 20M or so for all the licenses and tech expertise and the GE manager that made the deal got a promotion because he had a series of VERY good financial end-of-quarter reports.

Re:What corporations?By Proxy USA MIC

[OldHawk777]

Military Industrial Complex [AKA: Defense Industry], but I cannot agree with some criminal legal logic of "two wrongs making a right" expressed by others.

Stop the Presses

[Nom du Keyboard]

Stop the presses!
Man bites dog!
The Chinese steal technology!
Is anyone really surprised?

Re:Like college and grad school

[veldon]

Ridiculous. The negative side of China's rise to power is not the color of their skin, but the dismissal of human rights by their federal government.

ownership != influence

[dhammabum]

You are mistaken that a corporation must be state owned for a government to act on its behalf. There are numerous well known US examples: United Fruit (historically), Haliburton, Microsoft, RIAA/MPAA and the recent revelation (via Wikileaks) of US diplomats aiding manufacturers of genetically engineered products. In such a corrupt system, ownership is not required.

Re:ownership != influence

[toriver]

Also the steel tariffs erected by GWB to protect a few thousand steel producing jobs in the southern states, at the expense of the greater number of jobs in the steel consuming industries elsewhere in the States, which no longer could get cheap foreign steel.

Re:Like college and grad school

[dov_0]

Ridiculous. The negative side of China's rise to power is not the color of their skin, but the dismissal of human rights by their federal government.

and what respect for human rights has the US government shown? Iraq war crimes, Afghanistan, Guantanimo, water-boarding of POW's, not to mention the level of spying on it's own citizens as well as now the mainstream humiliation of it's own citizens by the TSA and agent provocateur methods used by the FBI against muslim citizens. AK Marc is right. The elephant in the room is just a mix of xenophobia, rabid nationalism and a hatred of opposing political ideals.

The USA has nothing and never has had any right to boast about it's human rights record. It's bathed in the blood of other nations from it's birth. Sheesh the country can't even get it together enough to care for it's own poor, sick and elderly.

Just one line, but 3 technologies

[dutchwhizzman]

The translation states that the technologies were all adapted to the Chinese line system, by the western companies. That means they only have to support one line type, but get access to 3 different technologies. They don't have to deal with adapting them to their own system anymore because they bought them adapted already. They are the only country right now that has the luxury of being able to choose, mix and match from all high-speed trains in the world. I'd say that's pretty awesome indeed.

Gotta Appreciate People Who Learn

[MarkvW]

The colonialists ate Chinese lunch. The current regime isn't serving.

Guess there's not going to be a sequel to the Opium Wars.

Re:Gotta Appreciate People Who Learn

[kubitus]

you are damned right!

If they manage to have Taiwan want to come back into their Nation tyhen they did a good job!

I compared schools in Europe, US and China. I tend to have my kids go to school in China.

And I saw Chinese people arrest a pickpocket. Cant remember to have seen/heard such in Europe or US!

Centralized planning has some advantages

[FoolishOwl]

It's interesting that the people who criticize centralized economic planning always point to the failures of that model in Eastern Europe, ignoring its early successes, or the more obvious recent successes in China. It goes to show that there's more than one way to organize a political economy, and that the Chinese model has some strategic advantages.

As far as this strategy goes, the thing I find to dislike about it is that it's emphatically nationalist: the goal is to benefit China, at the expense of competing economic powers. But, the criticisms I read here are also at least implicitly nationalist.

Re:Centralized planning has some advantages

[DNS-and-BIND]

It speaks volumes that a Westerner finds the idea of a nation promoting its own interests to be a weird idea. If some idea benefits 20,000 Americans OR benefits 20,001 Kenyans, it's obvious that America should pursue the latter course, eh? Sad.

Re:Centralized planning has some advantages

[FoolishOwl]

I don't find the idea of a nation promoting its own interests to be a weird idea. I find the idea of a nation promoting its own interests at the expense of another nation's interests to be morally reprehensible.

Ethical wisdom is a matter of seeing through the prisoner's dilemma and finding the optimal outcome for all involved parties.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Don't forget foreign debt

[dutchwhizzman]

China already owns 20% of all foreign USA debt (Japan also owns 20%). The USA government can't do anything "funny" or the Chinese will devaluate the US dollar so much that the average Nigerian 419er won't even be interested in US citizens anymore. With the USA foreign debt as high as it is today, they have effectively lost the power over the US national markets completely to Japan and China. Forty years ago, they found out that this would be a bad thing, when the oil crisis started and it turned out that most of the dollars payed for foreign oil were used to buy US companies and real estate. I guess by not allowing the Chinese to buy into companies and real estate, they tried to protect their economy from anything like that happening again. However, if you need foreign money to fund your own economy, because it's basically tits up, you end up being owned anyway.

The only real solution for this for the USA would be to stop exporting war and start producing their own goods again, instead of importing everything from "cheap" countries. Those goods aren't cheap, they just make them appear cheap because you pay the rest through your foreign debts. Stop importing and start producing, even if the price appears to be higher. Everything you make yourself, you save money going abroad.

Re:Don't forget foreign debt

[circletimessquare]

i agree 110%. thank you

This is news?

[ebs16]

This is textbook import substitution industrialization, just on a rapid time frame. Nothing new here. Move along...

corporate mentality

[drew30319]

If our corporations appropriately adjusted their strategies this would be happening in the U.S. economy, with 7-12 large companies working together to craft a standard. The tech sector is (mostly) successful with this model & manufacturing needs to get on board; it would benefit the entire U.S. economy and their stock can rise along with the country's. Unfortunately the concept of "winning together" went the way of crafting strategy beyond the next quarterly call.

Short-term planning + unhealthy greed is why Adam Smith is crying.

I don't realize you didn't realize eariler...

[sam0737]

China forced all foreign willing to take a piece of cake in China to form with China's company. Not just train, but all the automobile players in China...

People couldn't figure that out that China is "learning" the technology along the way? Very much similar to Japan back in 50's I guess?

Re:Like college and grad school

[SplashMyBandit]

The funny thing is that the Chinese government already considers itself in a competitive "war" with you, and has done for several decades. They will do whatever it takes to "win", primarily for nationalistic reasons (they certainly don't do it for the ordinary citizen, although it is sold as that). Just because you didn't notice it doesn't mean they weren't thinking in those terms. This is quite different to the US where the government funds innovation itself rather than a systematic program of stealing (corporations are trans-national and another thing entirely).

IP on you...

[mevets]

IP agreements are the sad thrashing of the nearly dead; like the dinosaurs trying to escape the tar pits.
WIPO is all very polite and such, but sending soldiers to die for natural resources is one thing, sending them after "IP" is quite different. I hope I'm not proved wrong.

I've been on the CRH2

[DNS-and-BIND]

I've been on the Chinese CRH2 train many times. The first time I saw one sitting in the station, my immediate reaction was "It's a Japanese shinkansen!" You know your gut feeling that you don't rationally control? Yeah, that. A total copy.

But try telling the Chinese that: they simply won't accept it. The CRH2 is Chinese innovation through and through, it was built from blueprints up by Us Good Chinese People. Same as the Shanghai maglev. Tell any resident of Shanghai that the maglev was built by Germans and they'll turn their brains off.

So ? Problem is ?

[unity100]

What we do is to exchange market for technologies

true and true. its a basic trade. they gave technology, chinese gave them the money. (as market).

giants

[ehack]

Newton in a letter to Robert Hooke in February 1676:

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Re:Like college and grad school

[Asic Eng]

and what respect for human rights has the US government shown?

Not a lot, but that doesn't prevent China from being worse. Sure there is the dubious foreign policy of the US, but China has a dubious foreign policy all of it's own. It makes territorial claims on basically everyone of it's neighbors (e.g. India, Japan, Taiwan) it supports the worst regimes in the world (e.g. Burma, North Korea) and it's approach to exploit Africa is even more unscrupulous than that of western countries. There is plenty of room to criticize China

I don't know why this is news ...

[xlns]

... China had been known for doing this for years now. Take, for an example, the way how they built J11 jet fighter, rip-off of Su-27. The problem with Chine, unlike, let say, Japan who is also know for purchasing foreign know-how, is that they do it semi-paid - they pay until the goods are delivered. After that, they just say it does not comply with their standards no more. It's great to have you in WTO, China ...

Re:Like college and grad school

[LostInTaiwan]

Whatever fault and atrocity US may have committed, anyone in the world is free to criticize and any US resident is free to discuss and lobby for change. The same cannot be said for China and that is fundamental difference between China and the rest of the free world.

I disagree strong with the Patriot Act, the use of torture and the Iraq War, but even I know that those actions pale in comparison to the tens of millions if not hundred of millions of Chinese that perished in the last 50 years due to the ineptness of an authoritarian regime.

While China certainly has achieve spectacular economic growth in the last 50 years, but I would argue that the US civil rights movement that continues today has far more importance than avoiding starvation.

Re:Like college and grad school

[Anonymous Coward]

‘Knavery seems to be so much the striking feature of its (America's) inhabitants that it may not in the end be an evil that they will become aliens to this kingdom.’ - King George III

Re:What corporations?By Proxy USA MIC

[Anonymous Coward]

but I cannot agree with some criminal legal logic of "two wrongs making a right" expressed by others.

But two Wongs can make a right.

Re:Like college and grad school

[drinkypoo]

Not a lot, but that doesn't prevent China from being worse.

We export our suffering. We get a share of the responsibility for China. There is plenty of room to criticise China, but to suggest that China is more evil than the USA is to stick your fingers in your ears and shout LALALALA WE'RE NOT EVIL. Remember, forces in the USA profit from Chinese imperialism and slavery; by putting money into the system they fund its continuance. Citizens of the USA patronize these abstracted enslavers and murderers, making us responsible for their behavior, in turn making us murderers in the third place.

Before we were doing it with dollars we were doing it with guns, and United Fruit (among others) exists only because American military forces were used to force such a situation.

You're a deluded rube if you think that the powers that run China are more evil than the powers that run the USA.

Re:Just name one!

[drinkypoo]

It also isn't the same as say a state run oil company, a state run bank, a state run car company, a state run weapons company. These are companies which take money from the US government out of patriotic duty rather than take it from the Chinese government, because these companies were stated in America and are run by American citizens.

Uh, what? Look, there is no difference between FMC or McDonnell-Douglas or what have you and a state-owned military equipment manufactory, except on paper. Either way the institution is a means of putting tax money from the people in the hands of a few.

Dishonest and brilliant

[MasaMuneCyrus]

Typically how it goes is:

1.) China promises a foreign company lots of freedom of business, hundreds of billions in future contracts down the road

2.) China strong-arms the foreign company into a joint-venture 51% owned by a Chinese company (note, this is different from a Chinese subsidiary of the foreign company. The Chinese company is an independent rival to the foreign company). The foreign company must surrender all IP rights to the Chinese company that are developed as part of the 51% 49% relationship.

3.) Having initially imported products form the foreign company, China presses the foreign company to move more and more production to China.

4.) After the foreign company has invested huge sums of money and time into the Chinese market, China changes the law and forces the foreign company to manufacture a set percent (e.g., 40%) of all of the production of their product in China by a domestic Chinese company (again, we're not talking about the Chinese branch of a foreign company, we're talking about a completely separate domestic Chinese company).

5,) In order to meet the strict Chinese-domestic-manufacturing limits, the foreign company has to trade huge amounts of technology to some random state-back domestic Chinese company. Even though some small amount of technology sharing was agreed upon prior to entering the Chinese market, the reality is that in order to produce 40% or so of something (e.g., a bullet train) in China by a Chinese company that was previously built 0% in China, you have to give huge amounts of technology to that company and spend tons of resources to train that Chinese company's engineers. All this technology gifting by the foreign company to the Chinese company is done outside of the technology agreement framework in order to meet the strict 40% Chinese manufacturing quotas.

6.) After the domestic Chinese company has received sufficient advanced technology and training from the foreign company, the Chinese government simply stops making new contracts with the foreign company, starts manufacturing whatever the product was (e.g., a bullet train) 100% in China courtesy of the now-advanced Chinese company, and the government buys exclusively from the Chinese company. The foreign company finds themselves having given all of their technology to a Chinese company as a part of "doing business" in China, and then they find themselves discriminated against and completely forced out of the entire Chinese market. They also find themselves having a new Chinese rival selling what is essentially an identical product for significantly less. And, of course, the Chinese company has an unlimited budget and shapes the laws courtesy of the Chinese government.

No, most free countries do NOT work like this. The Chinese government entices foreign companies to come to China, then changes the laws once they are there in order to strong-arm the foreign companies to give up all of their secrets. Don't get me started on corporate espionage by the Chinese which is at or even greater than the level and frequency of the Soviets during the Cold War, and all of that espionage is state-backed and goes straight to up-and-coming Chinese companies (because Chinese business and Chinese government are intertwined, after all)

Of course, I don't blame China. What they're doing is brilliant--exploitative and dishonest, but brilliant. I blame the greedy short-sighted companies and their selfish executives, and I also blame my own government for creating the business conditions that make this possible.

Re:Dishonest and brilliant

[MasaMuneCyrus]

I might also note that China throws their weight around and in some cases does force foreign companies to invest in such reckless and short-sighted ways in China. For instance, once some company (we'll say Hitachi) invests a bunch in China, the government, which has absolutely zero qualms with mafia-style bullying, can very simply do things like, "Hitachi, if you do not enter into a 51% 49% joint-venture with this Chinese company, we will cease to sell X component to you." Being that China manufactures at least some vital components for nearly everything, Hitachi would have no choice but to comply with their demands, lest their business in Japan also be harmed.

The moral of the story is to never, ever trust China (the state-backed businesses, not the people, who are very friendly, honest, and hospitable). China looks out for nobody but itself. It does not have a world-centric view, it has a China-centric view. It does not look for win-win or mutually beneficial solutions, it looks only for solutions that benefit itself, more often than not at the detriment of others. It's a huge up-and-coming country with a potential for investment not seen since the early United States, but to ever rely on China's goodwill without a backup plan is a sure guarantee of future disaster and destruction.

Re:Like college and grad school

[bickerdyke]

That isn't a side of their rise to power at all. It's much older.

Re:Like college and grad school

[rtfa-troll]

Right; for example nobody nobody suggested harming Julian Assange for publishing anti USA information. Nobody suggested arresting for treason a man who isn't even American. C'mon; pull the other one.

A duck!

[hoboroadie]

The Ames brothers stole their technology from the English, but then they innovated. That's what put the colonies on the map, so to speak.

Ummm

[Maury Markowitz]

"Another strategy is buy-to-build. The first three trains were imported as a whole; the second three were assembled with imported parts; subsequent trains contain more and more Chinese made parts."

Uhhh, that's how *all* heavy industrial projects work. Most contracts specifies local-build parts because otherwise your trade balance goes whacky and currencies get mashed. Remove all references of "China" and you have the story of practically any train built in the last 50 years.

The Toronto streetcar fleet is a Swiss design, by SIG. We bought three and then made the rest in Thunder Bay. The ICTS was originally a German maglev, but they pulled out and we got the design work for free. The Amtrak Turboliners are the same, as are most civilian aircraft.

Another "yellow scare" story.

Maury

Re:Like college and grad school

[Asic Eng]

So by collaborating with China to an extent, the US is more responsible for evil done by China, then China itself? That's absurd.

Certainly the US has a long history of imperialism and genocide, criticizing that is reasonable. It's not reasonable to use that as an excuse for China to do the same now. If it was evil then, then it's important to stop it from happening again.

Why half-empty?

[JSBiff]

It's an interesting observation that they run half empty. Why is that? Are the routes poorly planned, so that there are simply not enough people wanting to travel to the other destinations along the lines? Do Chinese people simply not travel much because it is not part of their culture, but over time ridership may increase as people get more comfortable with travel and interested in visiting other cities in China? Are the fares too expensive for most Chinese to afford to be able to ride? Do the people just not trust the technology and are afraid of accidents?

Slip Sliding away

[lsatenstein]

American business == wake up. its time to realize that your US citizens jobs are being exported. Soon you guys will export your businesses (as IBM has done). Then Americans, you will have to find work in China, and become Chinese citizens. Global economies mean global citizenship. Sadly, the USA is truly on the downward slope.

cts, what happened to you?

[alba7]

You were once a devoted advocate for the military dissemination of freedom, democracy and the american way of life.

Now you seem to have lost all faith in the military–industrial complex.

Also, you left kuro5hin for good.

What's happened?

They've done this with Nuclear tech too

[JSBiff]

Back in November, a blogger named Rod Adams, who runs the Atomic Insights blog, ran a story about how the Chinese acquired Nuclear Reactor technology which U.S. taxpayers had pay Billions of dollars on R&D to create, for the Westinghouse AP1000 series of nuclear reactors. China convinced Westinghouse to sell them the design info by promising the purchase of a small number of reactors, and after that, the Chinese will make their own. Even export it to other countries and compete with Westinghouse over the design.

If a company decides to make such a bargain, in the *general* case, I figure that's their business. But, when they take tech that U.S. taxpayers subsidized the R&D, I think that's crossing a line. Basically, we pay the bills, and China gets the profits. That's insane. Of course, a big driver of that dynamic is how screwed up U.S. policy and private investment regarding nuclear technology has become - basically, it's become about impossible to get nuclear plants built in the U.S., the industry died here, so our nuclear engineering and manufacturing companies have struck whatever bargains they have to with places like China which *will* build reactors.

The last hope I have with regards to U.S. nuclear innovation is with fast-breeder reactor technology (such as the GE-Hitachi PRISM). I *really* hope we can keep that for a little while and make some money off *that* U.S. taxpayer expenditure (the PRISM is the result of a U.S. DOE project called the Integral Fast Reactor), in the coming decades.

I wouldn't expect it to be reasonable for a country to hold on to 'exclusive' rights to any technology forever, but it would be nice to at least realize a reasonable level of benefit/profit from our taxpayer expenditures on technology before it becomes "public domain".

Re:Like college and grad school

[AK Marc]

No, they don't. Well, for any reasonable value of "you." They don't want to see the fall of the USA, nor the death of the citizens thereof. They are at war with companies, and I own shares of plenty of companies in investments and retirement funds. But that's not a war with me, and they aren't interested in making me dead.

And even you note that corporations are another thing entirely, but I assert they are not, and thus we are "at war" with them (and ourselves) and have been longer than they have been at war with us. Both China and the US are on a path headed to the same place. They have the State owning the corporations. We have the corporations owning the State. But our paths are converging. And the differences aren't nearly as vast as people make them out to be and are closing rapidly.

Re:Like college and grad school

[HiThere]

1) The reports seems to say that they *are* respecting the patents.
2) Patents are national law. If a country doesn't like them, it doesn't need to have laws about them.
3) The US respect for foreign patents isn't a record we'd want anyone else to emulate. (Check out the patent on, e.g., Neem tree oil. Then tell me that the US even follows it's own laws. With a straight face.)

Re:Like college and grad school

[KZigurs]

And US has never supported 'worst regimes in the world' right?

Re:Like college and grad school

[drinkypoo]

Nope. We're simply as responsible. When you participate in a thing you lose the moral high ground, and you have to share the low area with the rest of the scum.

Re:Like college and grad school

[quetzalblue]

Here in the US you can take just about anybody to court and, if you have enough money you can still win. Either in court or out of court. Please dont use the compromised legal system as a crutch for your argument.

Re:Like college and grad school

[Asic Eng]

I don't think that makes sense. Would you apply the same criteria everywhere else, or is that specific to China? Let's say there is a baker in your town - he sells his goods cheaply, but you happen to know that he beats his wife. You are purchasing your baked goods there. Who carries the main responsibility there - you or the baker? Is it a sensible course of action to stop shopping there - what's the result, will he stop beating his wife? Should you try to do something about this situation, or should you sit on your ass doing nothing, because by buying his bread you are just as responsible, so you don't have the moral high ground required to act?

I can't help feeling that the only beneficiary of your logic is the baker (or China respectively).

Re:Just name one!

[elucido]

It also isn't the same as say a state run oil company, a state run bank, a state run car company, a state run weapons company. These are companies which take money from the US government out of patriotic duty rather than take it from the Chinese government, because these companies were stated in America and are run by American citizens.

Uh, what? Look, there is no difference between FMC or McDonnell-Douglas or what have you and a state-owned military equipment manufactory, except on paper. Either way the institution is a means of putting tax money from the people in the hands of a few.

Those are military grade weapons companies. Nobody argues that they shouldn't be nationalized or state owned.

We are talking about everything else. China owns a lot more companies and controls a lot more companies than the USA.

Re:I think he's fucking kidding you.

[FoolishOwl]

Whoosh! I think he refers to the lack of critical analysis regards the reports of dissidents being re-trained.

He said "popular media," as if the oppressiveness of the Soviet and Chinese police states had not been a frequently recurring trope in movies, television, and comics, including direct and indirect references to the abuse of psychiatry and mental hospitals, especially in the '50s and '60s. "The Manchurian Candidate," or many episodes of Twilight Zone, come to mind.

Even relatively recently, Half-Life 2 had an extended segment of the game that took place in a Eastern European mental hospital, full of ominous references to torture and abuse.

In general, much of what I know about Marxism comes from the dissidents, anyway.

Re:Just name one!

[mirix]

Well, except the American setup is even more inefficient, because the corporations have to turn a profit. I guess you could say "competition" in the US will improve efficiency, but the small amount of players with some items, like aerospace... not so much.

I don't think the Russians had $200 hammers. But they had other problems, of course.

Re:Like college and grad school

[drinkypoo]

I don't think that makes sense. Would you apply the same criteria everywhere else, or is that specific to China? Let's say there is a baker in your town - he sells his goods cheaply, but you happen to know that he beats his wife. You are purchasing your baked goods there. Who carries the main responsibility there - you or the baker?

It's time to stop thinking like that. You both carry the responsibility equally. Assigning fractions of blame is ridiculous. Either you are to blame or you are not. The degree is only a curiosity.

Is it a sensible course of action to stop shopping there - what's the result, will he stop beating his wife?

Probably not, but at least you're not funding it.

Should you try to do something about this situation,

Yes! You should. We all should. None of us should sit by while we know someone is being subjected to violence.

or should you sit on your ass doing nothing, because by buying his bread you are just as responsible, so you don't have the moral high ground required to act?

I think you already knew how I feel about that before we began this conversation. You stop buying his bread, and if that doesn't do the job, then you step in and do something. But certainly there is no room for us to complain about human rights abuses in China while we fund human rights abuse in China.

the consumer will still buy

[DrYak]

I'll put it another way: if China gets too annoying and the EU+US slap a 50% tariff on Chinese imports who do you think will blink first? The consumers who have to pay $5.99 for that plastic toy instead of $2.99?

the consumer will keep paying the ca. 6$ for the toys, because they have been raised as CONSUMers, and brain-washed into buying useless shiny plastic things by the marketing department of multinationnal corporations (mark.deps. which reside on the very western soil)

some consumers will complain. And someone will come with a brilliant plan to subsidise some import (the riight to own a wireless phone is a fundamental right) or save some corporation (their survival depends on imports and they are too big to fail).

meanwhile,china will still sell their goods to other markets (inland, rest of asia, south america, and the ultra-cheap stuff into emerging markets in africa) and not even notice that something is happenning with one among their many custommers.